TRAIL TALES 



JAMES DAVID GILLILAN 




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TRAIL TALES 



BY 

JAMES DAVID GILLILAN 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1915, by 
JAMBS DAVID GILLILAN 



SEP 14 1915 

©CI.A411486 



DEDICATED AFFECTIONATELY 

TO MY MOTHER, 

TO MY WIFE; 

LIKEWISE TO 

THE PREACHERS OF 

UTAH MISSION 

AND 

IDAHO ANNUAL CONFERENCE 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface 9 

God's Minister 11 

The Western Trail 13 

The Long Trail 19 

The Desert 31 

Sagebrush 39 

The Iron Trail 47 

A Railroad Saint in Idaho 49 

An Unusual Kindness 59 

Indians of the Trail 63 

Introductory Words 65 

Pocatello, the Chief 67 

The Babyless Mother 72 

Mary Muskrat 76 

Bad Ben 79 

A Three-cornered Sermon 82 

Three Years After 87 

Chief Joseph and His Lost Wallowa. 92 

The White Man's Book 96 

Lights and Sidelights 99 

The Stagecoach 107 

Among the Hills 117 

The Mother Deer 119 

The Shepherd 121 

The Feathered Drummer 122 

MORMONDOM 123 

The Trail of the Mormon 125 

Some Mormon Beliefs 131 

Weber Tom, Ute Polygamist 138 

Polygamy of To-day 145 

Great Salt Lake 149 

Argonaut Sam's Tale 157 

The Wraith of the Blizzard 167 

The Great Northwest 175 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

J. D. GiLLiLAN Frontispiece 

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce Indian Facing page 65 

Wallowa Lake Facing page 95 

End of the Trail Facing page 182 



PREFACE 

In his young manhood the writer of 
these sketches came up into this realm of 
widest vision, clearest skies, sweetest waters, 
and happiest people to engraft the green 
twig of his life upon the activities of the 
mountaineers of the thrilling West. 

At that time the vast plains and the bar- 
ren valleys were silvered over with the 
ubiquitous sage through which crept lazily 
and aimlessly the many unharnessed arroyo- 
making streams waiting only the appearance 
of their master, man. Under his scien- 
tific, skilled, and economic guidance these 
wild waters, lassoed, tamed, and set to 
work, taking the place of clouds where there 
are none, were soon to cause the gray 
garden of nature to become goldened by the 
well-nigh illimitable acres of grain and other 
home-making products. 

The West has an abundant variety of 
life of a sort most intensely human. Life, 

9 



10 PREFACE 

always so earnest in Anglo-Saxon lands, 
seems to have accentuated individuality 
here in a wondrous and contagious degree. 

These few stories, culled from the reper- 
toire of an active life of more than thirty 
years, are samples of personal experiences, 
and are taken almost at random from 
mining camp, frontier town and settlement, 
public and private life. 

As a minister the writer has had wide 
and varied opportunities in all the North- 
west, but more especially in Utah, Oregon, 
and Idaho. Many a man much more mod- 
est has far excelled him in life experiences, 
but some of them have never told. 

This little handful of goldenrod is affec- 
tionately dedicated to them of the Trails. 

The Author. 



GOD'S MINISTER 

Dedicated to the Mountain Ministers 

As terrace upon terrace 

Rise the mountains o'er the humbler hills 

And stretch away to dizzy heights 

To meet heaven's own pure blue; 

From thence to steal those soft and filmy 

clouds 
With which to wrap their heads and 

shoulders — 

Bare of other cloak — 
Transforming them to rains and snows 
To bless this elsewise desert world: 

So, he who stands God's minister 'mong men, 
High reaches out above all earthly things 
And comes in contact with the thoughts of 

God; 
Conveys them down in blessings to man- 
kind — 

Richest of blessings, 
Holiest fruit of heaven — 
Plucked fresh from off the Tree of Life 
That springs hard by the Lamb's white 

throne. 
And bears the plenteous leaves which grow 
To heal the wounded nations. 
11 



THE WESTERN TRAIL 



And step by step since time began 
I see the steady gain of man. 



THE WESTERN TRAIL 

"An overland highway to the Western 
sea" was the thought variously expressed 
by many men in both pubHc and private 
Hfe among the French, Enghsh, and Amer- 
icans from very early times. In 1659 
Pierre Radisson and a companion, by way 
of the Great Lakes, Fox, and "Ouisconsing" 
Rivers, discovered the "east fork" of the 
"Great River" and crossed to the "west 
fork," up which they went into what is 
now the Dakotas, only to find it going 
still "interminably westward." 

In 1766 Carver, an Englishman, went by 
the same route up the "east fork" to Saint 
Anthony Falls; thence he traveled to Can- 
ada, to learn from the Assiniboin Indians 
the existence of the "Shining Mountains" 
and that beyond them was the "Oregan," 
which went to the salt sea. 

As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote 
to George Rogers Clark to tell him he under- 
stood the English had subscribed a very 

15 



16 TRAIL TALES 

large sum of money for exploration of the 
country west of the Mississippi, and as far 
as California. He even expressed himself as 
being desirous of forming a party of Amer- 
icans to make the trip. 

Twenty years later, under the direction of 
President Thomas Jefferson, General Clark 
was made a member of the Lewis and 
Clark Expedition, which went up the "great 
river" and ultimately crossed through Mon- 
tana and Idaho to the Columbia (Oregan?' 
and the "salt sea." 

Zebulon Pike was turned back by the 
imperious Rocky Mountains in 1806. A 
few years later Captain Bonneville braved 
the plains, the plateaus, the mountain 
passes, and the deserts, and saw the Colum- 
bia. Then continuous migrations finally 
fixed the overland highway known from 
ocean to ocean as the Oregon Trail. 

The Mormons followed this national road 
when they trekked to the valley of Salt 
Lake in 1847 — a dolorous path to many. 

Because the Oregon Trail was nature's 
way, man and commerce made it their 
way. Road sites are not like city sites — 
made to order; they are discovered. For 



THE WESTERN TRAIL 17 

that reason the pioneer railway transcon- 
tinental also followed this trail. The Union 
Pacific marks with iron what so many of 
the emigrants marked with their tears and 
their graves. From the mouth of the 
Platte to the heart of the Rocky Moun- 
tains and beyond is a continuous cemetery 
of nameless tombs. 

The next few pages will give some 
sketches of fact depicting scenes of sun- 
light and shadow that fell on this highway 
in days not so very long agone. 



THE LONG TRAIL 



Those mighty pyramids of stone 

That wedge-like pierce the desert airs, 

When nearer seen and better known 
Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 

— Longfellow. 



THE LONG TRAIL 

The Old Overland Trail from the Mis- 
souri River to the Willamette is a distance 
of nearly two thousand miles. Before Jason 
Lee and Marcus Whitman sanctioned its 
use for the migrating myriads of Americans 
seeking the shores of the sunset sea, trap- 
pers and adventurers, good and bad, had 
mapped out a general route over the wind- 
whipped passes, where the storm stands 
sentinel and guards the granite ways among 
the rough Rocky Mountains. They had 
followed the falls-filled Snake and the 
calmer Columbia, which plow for a thou- 
sand miles or more among basaltic bastions 
buttressing the mountain sides, or through 
the lava lands where cavernous chasms 
yawn and abysmal depths echo back the 
sullen roar of the raging rapids. 

In the early forties of the nineteenth 
century restless spirits from Missouri and 
eastward began to filter through the finger- 
tips of the beckoning mountains of the 

21 



22 TRAIL TALES 

West and locate in the land where storms 
seldom come and where the extremes of 
heat and cold are unknown — Willamette 
Valley, Oregon. 

In these early days, a farmer, whom we 
shall name Johnson, with wife and son, 
hoping to better conditions and prolong life, 
thus sought the goal toward the setting sun. 
Starting when the sturdy spring was en- 
livening all nature, they left the malarial 
marshes of the Mississippi Valley, where 
quinine and whisky for "fevernagur" were 
to be had at 'every crossroads store, and in a 
couple of weeks found themselves west of 
the muddy Missouri, where the herds of 
humped bison grazed as yet unafraid among 
the rolling, well-wooded hills of eastern 
Kansas. 

Barring a few common hindrances, they 
went well and reached the higher and 
hotter plains in midsummer; they were out 
of the sight of hills and trees — just oije 
weary, eternal, unchangeable vista day 
after day. Mrs. Johnson had not been 
well, and after a few weeks that promised 
more for the future than they fulfilled, she 
began gradually to lose strength. 



THE LONG TRAIL 23 

But she was made of the uncomplaining 
material pioneers are wrought of, the ones 
who so lived, loved, and labored that the 
hard-earned sweets of civilization grew to 
highest perfection about their graves, and 
proved the most enduring monument to 
their memory. She never murmured other 
than to ask occasionally: "Father, how 
much farther? Isn't it a wonderfully long 
way to Oregon?" 

"Just over that next range of hills, I 
think, from what the trappers told me," 
was the reply, after they had come to the 
toes of the foothills that terminate the 
long-lying limbs of the giant Rockies. But 
he did not know the stealth of the moun- 
tains nor the fantastic pranks the canony 
ranges can play upon the stranger. A 
snowy-haired peak, brother to Father 
Time, wearing a fringe of evergreens for 
his neckruff, would play hide-and-seek 
with them for days, dodging behind 
this eminence and hiding away back of 
that hill, only to reappear apparently as 
far off as ever, and sometimes in a dif- 
ferent direction from where he last seemed 
to be. 



24 TRAIL TALES 

After a few more days: "Father, how 
many more miles do you think?" 

"O, not many now, I am sure!" cheerily 
and optimistically would come the answer. 

As they climbed, and climbed, and 
climbed, the ripening service-berry, black- 
ened by weeks of attention by the un- 
clouded sun, and the pine-hen and the 
speckled beauties from the noisy trout- 
streams, added to their comforts, and for a 
little while appeared to enliven the tired 
and fading woman. A frosty night or two, 
a peak newly whitened with early snow, 
put an invigorating thrill and pulse into 
the blood of the man and the boy, but she 
crept just a little nearer to the camp fire 
of evenings and found herself more and 
more languid in responding to the call of 
the day that returned all too soon for her. 
At last, rolling out on the Wahsatch side 
of the continental backbone, they encoun- 
tered very warm but shortening days, while 
the nights grew chillier. Having passed to 
the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well 
and faithfully marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in 
recent years, they began to realize that they 
were with the waters that flow to the west. 



THE LONG TRAIL 25 

One evening, after the tin plates, iron 
forks and knives, and the pewter spoons 
had been washed and returned to their box, 
and as they were getting ready for their 
nightly rest, Mrs. Johnson said, wearily: 
"Father, it just seems to me I would be 
glad if I never would waken again. It 
seems I would enjoy never again hearing the 
everlasting squeech, squeech of the wheels 
in the sand, and see the sun go down day 
after day so red and so far away over those 
new mountains. O, I am so tired!" 

"Never mind, mother, we are not far 
from our new home now;" and moving 
over to her side as she sat leaning against 
the wagon-tongue, the man slipped his own 
tired arm about her shoulders and let her 
rest against him, for he was indeed weary, 
and the trail was wonderfully long. 

The following morning he purposely lay 
still just a little longer than was his custom, 
although he was most prudently desirous of 
making as much speed as he could while 
the weather continued so good; he knew 
the rains might soon set in and make 
travel over unmade roads much worse than 
it already was. 



26 TRAIL TALES 

When he arose he noiselessly crept 
away from her side and quietly called the 
boy to go and bring up the horses and the 
cow, cautioning him to take off the horse- 
bell and carry it so as not to arouse the 
mother when he came to camp. Quietly 
as possible he made the fire and prepared 
their breakfast of fare that was daily be- 
coming scantier. Then, when all was ready, 
he tiptoed through the sand to where she 
lay under the spreading arms of a little 
desert juniper, such as are occasionally 
found in the deserts, and where she had 
said the night before she wished she could 
sleep forever. She looked so calm and 
restful he hesitated to wake her; it seemed 
like robbery to take from her one moment 
of the longed-for and hard-earned rest. 
Yet it was time they were on their road, and 
the day was fine; so after a few minutes he 
called, gently, "Mother, you're getting a 
nice rest, aren't you.^" 

She did not stir. He then stooped to 
kiss the languid lips — they were cold. She 
was dead. They had been seeking a home 
by the shores of the sunset sea; she had 
found the sunrise land. 



THE LONG TRAIL 27 

It is a sad, solemn, and sacred thing to be 
with our dead, but to be alone, hundreds of 
miles from the face of any friend, in such 
an hour, is an experience few ever have to 
meet. Pioneer-like, the father scans the 
horizon, locating all the prominent features 
of the landscape. He makes a rude map, 
not forgetting the juniper. As best he can 
he prepares the body for the burying. And 
such a burying! No lumber with which to 
make even a rough box; nothing but their 
daily clothing and nightly bedding was to 
be had. The unlined grave was more than 
usually forbidding. The desert demon had 
trailed that brave body and was now swal- 
lowing it up. They made the grave by the 
juniper where she last slept, and, sorrowing, 
the father and the son went on, firm in the 
resolve that the loved one should not 
always lie in a desert grave. 

Forty years later a man past middle- 
age, riding a horse and leading another, to 
whose packsaddle was fastened a box, went 
slowly along that old trail in Southern 
Idaho, now almost obliterated by many- 
footed Progress. He was scanning the hills 
and consulting a piece of age-yellowed 



28 TRAIL TALES 

paper, broken at all its ancient creases. It 
was the son obeying the dying request of 
the old father — going to find, if possible, 
the spot where the tired mother went to 
sleep so long ago, and bring all that re- 
mained to rest by his side. 

It was no easy task. Fertile fields, whose 
irrigated areas now presented billowy 
breasts of ripening grain; mighty ditches 
like younger and better-behaved rivers; a 
railway following the general direction of 
the old trail; ranch-houses and fat hay- 
stacks indenting the skyline once so bare 
of all except clumps of sage-brush — these 
all conspired to make the task next to 
impossible. 

Man may scratch the hillsides, but can- 
not mar the majesty of the mountains; 
they were unchanged. The map he car- 
ried was the one his father made on the 
spot more than a generation before. It 
had been well made and the specifications 
were minute. After a long while, carefully 
measuring and comparing, he found the 
spot to him so sacred. The juniper tree, 
so rare in that section, had not been dis- 
turbed by the new owner of the land, and 



THE LONG TRAIL 29 

as the precious burden, secured at last, was 
borne away, it still stood on guard — as if 
lonely now. Like father, like son. Both 
were faithfully bound by the strongest tie 
in the universe — love! 



THE DESERT 



Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

— Gray. 

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of 
their maps parts of the world which they do not 
know about, adding notes in the margin to the 
effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy 
deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable 
bogs. — Plutarch, 



THE DESERT 

Much of the Old Overland Trail lay 
across the "Great American Desert," as it 
was named in the earlier geographies. Ir- 
rigation and progressive energy have made 
these wastes in many instances literally to 
"blossom as the rose"; but until that was 
done these stretches were weary enough. 

He who knows only the desert of the 
geography naturally conceives it an abso- 
lutely forsaken and empty region where 
nothing but dust-storms are born unat- 
tended and die "without benefit of the 
clergy." But the desert has character and 
is as variable as many another creature. 

The Sand Storm 

An experience in an actual sand storm is 
food upon which the reminiscent may rumi- 
nate many a'^day, being much more pleasant 
in memory than in the making. First come 
the scurrying outriders, lithe and limber 
whisking gusts, dancing and whirling like 

33 



84 TRAIL TALES 

Moslem dervishes, coyly brushing the trav- 
eler or boldly flinging fierce fistfuls of dirt 
into his eyes; then off with a swish of in- 
visible skirts — vanishing possibly in the 
same direction whence they came. They 
go leaving him wiping his astonished eyes 
disgustedly, for the act was so sudden and 
tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware 
of it other and stronger gusts duplicate the 
dastardly deed of the first wingless wizard 
of the plains, and the hapless voyager is 
left gasping. Almost immediately there are 
to be seen the regular "desert devils," as 
they are called, bringing a dozen or more 
whirling columns of yellow silt rapidly 
through the air, each pirouetting on one 
foot, assuming meanwhile all sorts of fan- 
tastic shapes. 

Now for the fierce onset. Like blasts of 
a blizzard, the shrapnel of the desert is 
hurled into eyes, face, ears, and nostrils; 
little rivers pour down the back and fill 
every discoverable wrinkle and cranny of 
the clothing with their gritty load. 

If in summer, buttoning the clothing is 
suffocation, and the perspiration soon makes 
one a mass of grime; if in winter, it is 



THE DESERT 35 

not so unbearable, for a comfortable fenc- 
ing can be made against the sand and the 
cold. 

The whole landscape is obliterated by and 
by, and the trails are so often drift-filled 
that unless one is himself accustomed to 
such methods of travel or has an experienced 
plainsman as his driver and guide, there is 
danger of becoming lost, or so out of the 
way that night may overtake him and 
compel a waterless camp for himself and 
team. 

Twilight and Dawn 

But to see the morning slip off its night 
clothes and step out into daylight, or 
watch day don her night-wraps and snuggle 
down into twilight on the quiet sand-ocean ! 
In summer it is a scene of splendor, often 
coming after a day or an evening of sandy 
wrath. 

At early dawn, lining the eastern horizon, 
are the soft pencils of bashful day over- 
topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet 
sleeping mountains, fifty or more miles 
away. A faint hinting of the lightening of 
the sky only deepens the blackness of the 



36 TRAIL TALES 

snow-streaked peaks. The cowardly coy- 
ote's yelp comes more and more faintly, 
the burrowing owl's "to-whit, to-whoo" 
falls dying on the moveless air, and the 
white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up 
as if to catch the early worm he is almost 
sure not to find. The loping jack rabbit 
slips softly to his greasewood shelter and 
the prairie dog bounces barking from his 
snake-infested haunt, noisily preparing for 
his day's digging and foraging. 

The stubborn mountains begin to let the 
sun's forerunning rays glide between them; 
the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming 
into kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, 
while the swift arms of the day-painter are 
reaching from between the peaks of the 
precipitous crags and dyeing the scales of 
the mackerel sky with hues and tints the 
rainbow would covet. 

In the opposite direction a morning 
mirage inverts an image of a stretch of 
trees along the far-away river and blends 
them top to top till they seem greenish- 
black columns supporting the dun clouds 
of the west, while the belated moon peers 
through the half-unreal corridors. 



THE DESERT 37 

Sunset 

The sunset is far more gorgeous; it often 
reaches grandeur. Let it be a winter even- 
ing. A suggestion of storm has been playing 
threats. The western hills have reached 
up their time-toughened arms and carried 
the burnt-out lantern of day to bed, tuck- 
ing him away in gold-lace tapestry and 
rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, 
and brown clouds change quickly to purple, 
pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky 
itself forms a background for the dis- 
solving community of interlacing filaments 
of priceless filigree, till in time too full of 
interest to compute by measure, the whole 
heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of 
color, a prodigality of shifting scene, mak- 
ing one think of the descriptions essayed by 
the writer of the Apocalypse. 

We think of Moses who wished to see 
God "face to face," but was told he would 
be permitted to behold only the "dying 
away of his glory." No wonder the man 
who was forty years in the wilderness be- 
fore that grand exode, and forty more 
through the unsurveyed deserts, was en- 
abled to write the majestic prose-poems 



38 TRAIL TALES 

that have Hved unaltered through all these 
thousands of critical years! He was in 
the region where inspiration is dispensed 
with hands of infinite wealth. God is the 
dispenser. 



SAGEBRUSH 



This is the forest primeyaL— Longfellow. 

The continuous woods where rolls the Oregon. — 
Bryant 



SAGEBRUSH 

Frequently within these pages mention 
has been made of the commonest of all our 
native plants on the Trail — sagebrush. Bo- 
tanically, it is Artemisia tridentata. The 
new Standard Dictionary defines sagebrush 
as "any one of the various shrubby species 
of Artemisia, of the aster family, growing 
on the elevated plains of the Western 
United States, especially Artemisia triden- 
tata, very abundant from Montana to Colo- 
rado and westward." The leaf ends in 
three points; hence the adjective tridentata 
— the three-toothed artemisia. 

There are several varieties of sagebrush, 
and a person not well acquainted with the 
desert might easily mistake one for the 
other. There are the white sage, a good 
forage plant for sheep, and the yellow sage, 
which, when properly taken, can be made 
useful for cattle. Then there is the com- 
mon variety, the sort named above. This 
is not to be mistaken for the prickly grease- 

41 



42 TRAIL TALES 

wood which infests the more alkaHne re- 
gions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom 
so hke the goldenrod, but with a very dis- 
agreeable odor. No man who knows will 
ever buy land where the greasewood grows 
thickly; it is unproductive because of the 
large percentage of alkali. But the ancient- 
looking sage is a pretty sure indication of 
fertility of soil. Mother Nature is some- 
times hard pushed to find dresses for all 
her poorer areas; of course the better por- 
tions of the land east or west, north or 
south, care for their clothes better than do 
these arid stretches and the clothing is a 
richer vegetation. 

This ever-gray, little hunger-pinched 
pygmy among trees looks about as much 
like an oak as does a diminutive monkey 
like a grown man. 

A peculiarity of this individual in tree- 
dom is that it keeps its ash-colored leaf 
until it has a new set to put on in the 
spring, so that all winter long it presents 
the same color as it does in the summer- 
time. Its bark is loose and shaggy, being 
shed rapidly, and gives one the thought of 
the old grape vine; hanging in bunches, the 



SAGEBRUSH 43 

bole has always a ragged appearance. It 
is truly the dry-land plant, always found 
where the alkali or water is not too abun- 
dant; but in favored spots where there is 
only a little dampness and not too much 
fierceness of the summer heat it grows 
eight or ten feet high, making a body 
large enough for fence posts. This is ex- 
traordinary, for usually these Liliputian 
forests do not attain a height of more than 
four feet, and often much less. So diminu- 
tive are these solemn woods that the 
ordinary gang-plow can walk right through 
them, turning the shrubbery under like tall 
grass, although every tree is perfect, just 
like the dwarf creations produced by the 
resourceful Japanese. 

The seed of this tiny tree grows on stiff, 
upright filaments like the broom-corn 
straws. These stems are very bitter and 
are often used by the range-riders on long 
rides or roundups to excite the flow of 
saliva when thirst overtakes them too far 
from water. Because of its bitterness it is 
often called wormwood. 

Not many uses have been found for the 
wood of these primeval forests. In many 



U TRAIL TALES 

sections the people have nothing but sage- 
brush for firewood. The whole tree is 
used, special stoves, or heaters, being made 
to accommodate the whole plant. It is 
gathered in the following manner: Two 
immense T-rails of railroad iron are laid 
side by side, one inverted, and securely 
fastened together; to the ends of these are 
hitched two teams of horses or mules, which 
pulling parallel to each other, are driven 
into the standing fairy forests and the 
swaths of fallen timber show the track of 
this unnatural storm. Its roots have such 
slight hold on the soil that it easily falls. 
Wagons and pitchforks follow, and the 
whole of the felling is hauled untrimmed to 
the home for hand-axing if too large; and 
it is all burned, top and root. There is so 
much vegetable oil in this queer plant that 
it makes a fine and very quick fire, green or 
dry. 

After a summer rain there is no aromatic 
perfume surpassing that of the odor of 
sagebrush filling the newly washed air. 
The mountaineer who has had to make a 
trip East gladly opens his window, as his 
train pushes back into the habitat of these 



SAGEBRUSH 45 

aromatic shrubs, to get an early whiflF of 
the health-laden, sage-sweetened atmos- 
sphere of the beloved Westland and home- 
land. 



THE IRON TRAIL 



There are hermit souls that live withdrawn 

In their houses of self -content; 
There are souls like stars that dwell apart 

In their fellowless firmament. 
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths 

Where highways never ran. 
But, let me live by the side of the road 

And be a friend to man. 

— Sam Walter Foss. 



A RAILROAD SAINT IN IDAHO 

The ''railroad saint" was a locomotive 
engineer. His life was ever an open book, 
yet while careful and almost severe in his 
personal religious habits, he did not criti- 
cize the manners of his associates. He 
simply let his well kept searchlight shine. 

Though born in Ohio, his boy life was 
spent mainly in Nebraska, when it was 
just emerging from the ragged swaddlings 
of rough frontierdom; and during his young 
manhood he lived in Wyoming, at the time 
when men "carried the law in their hip- 
pockets," as he graphically expressed it. 

Early becoming an employee of the 
Union Pacific, he was a permanent portion 
of its westward intermountain extension, 
and he did his life's work among the scenic 
cliffs and clefts of the picturesque crags 
and corrugated canons of the wrinkled 
ridges in the Rocky and the Wahsatch 
ranges. Opportunities for literary educa- 
tion were very limited to one so engaged, 

49 



50 TRAIL TALES 

and little more than what was absolutely 
necessary to the railmen did he receive. 
But he was not ignorant by any means. 
In later years he read extendedly and with 
careful discrimination. He had a poet's 
soul, but was not visionary. 

His mother had been a careful and sen- 
sible Christian. The indelible impress she 
left upon him was like to that given by 
Jochebed to her son Moses. He never 
wholly escaped from her hallowed influence, 
although he descended into vicious living 
and became a notorious and blatant blas- 
phemer, sceptic, and drunkard. 

Once when attending a national conven- 
tion of railway engineers in an Eastern city 
he noticed a little flower boy vainly at- 
tempting to dispose of his roses. Our 
engineer (who always had a feeling for the 
"other fellow") paid the lad for all he had 
left and directed him to carry them to the 
hotel where the delegates were stopping, 
and give them to the ladies in the parlor. 
This act was repeated on successive days. 
It attracted attention finally, and one of 
the delegates asked him if he were a Chris- 
tian. Characteristically he blurted out: 



THE IRON TRAIL 51 

"Do you see anything about me that indi- 
cates it? If so, I will take it off at once. 
Why do you ask such a question?" 

"Because," said the questioner, "your 
kindness to that pale-faced little flower 
boy makes people think you are." 

"Nothing at all queer about that," was 
the quick reply. "Common humanity 
should dictate such deeds. If I myself 
wanted a favor, I'd not go to any Christian 
for it; I'd rather tackle a bartender or a 
gambler." 

"Well, Dr. T , of the Methodist 

Church, has heard of you," remarked his 
questioner, "and he says he would like to 
meet you for an hour or so before you 
leave the city." 

"But I've no desire to meet any preacher, 
though if it will afford the gentleman any 
pleasure, I will gladly do it for that reason 
and no other. What do you suppose he 
wants?" 

The intermediary arranged a time of 
meeting, and after introducing the men, 
left the "eagle eye" in the pleasant study 
of the minister, a pastor of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South. After a few 



52 TRAIL TALES 

minutes of easy conversation, the minister 
abruptly cut all Gordian knots and said: 
"Mr. , are you a Christian?" 

"No, sir, not so you can notice it." 

"Why are you not?" 

"Why should I be?" 

"It gives to every one who embraces true 
religion a better, broader, worthier view 
and conception of life." 

"Wherein, mister?" 

"It puts purpose into his life and inter- 
prets the end to which he is tending." 

Then came up from the keen intellect- 
quiver of our Rocky Mountain engineman 
all the stock phrases, replies, and argu- 
ments of Voltaire, Rousseau, Ingersoll, and 
others whose writings he knew perfectly. 

With Christian and cultivated patience 
the minister listened and then said with 
captivating and sympathetic tenderness: 
"But, my dear sir, that is all speculation 
on the part of those scholarly and eloquent 
men whom you quote so accurately. They 
know no better. The religion of Jesus is 
not speculation; it is practical knowledge. 
Would not you, sir, like to know personally 
as to its truth?" 



THE IRON TRAIL 53 

"Yes, but how can I?" 

His foot had been taken in the snare of 
the wise trapper. 

Said the preacher: '*You can; and this 
is the way. As you leave this city for 
your return to the West, get a cheap New 
Testament; indeed, here is a copy; please 
accept it. Tear it in two in the middle, 
retaining only the four Gospels — Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John. Read them; you 
will by yourself and by this means find 
the way to perfect knowledge." 

He of the throttle, hungry for the deepest 
knowledge, did as directed and advised. 

Back to his cab and engine he went, 
under the deepest conviction. Yet he de- 
clared that he needed no extraneous as- 
sistance to be as good as any Christian; 
Jesus he considered a superfluity, and said 
so. The negative influences of the atheistic 
authors yet warped him. He said: "I dare 
any of you to watch me. I can and will be 
as upright as any Christian on earth." 
But after a short time of exemplary con- 
duct, he would wake up some morning only 
to discover to his hearty disgust that he 
had been on an extended period of dissi- 



54 TRAIL TALES 

pation. Later he would attempt another 
straightening-up and try to "be good" 
without the necessary becoming so, only to 
fall again and harder than before. 

Once, after such humiliating debauch, he 
entered a saloon which contained the only 
barber shop in the village, the railway 
division point where he had his "lay- 
overs" for regular rest. He sat down for 
his daily shave. It was the morning after 
pay-day among the employees, and, as he 
stated it to the writer, "everybody, even 
the barber, had been drunk." Cigar stumps, 
empty bottles, cards, and other plentiful 
signs of the previous night's carousals cov- 
ered the floor with bacchanalian litter. 
Lying there, eyes shut, an Armageddon was 
taking place on the stage of his perturbed 
soul. His story is this: 

"While lying there that morning a voice 
said to me, *You are not a square-dealer.' 
I opened my eyes on the barber, only to see 
a bloated face with impassive and mute 
lips; he had said nothing, I could easily see. 
I closed my eyes again, only to hear, *You 
do not treat me as you would a gentleman.' 
I now knew that the voice was that of an 



THE IRON TRAIL 55 

unseen person, and I replied mentally but 
really, 'Who are you, and what do you 
want?' T am Jesus, whom you deny with- 
out having known, and condemn without 
having attempted to prove. You have 
been saying all the while you can succeed 
without my assistance, and you know you 
have failed every time. All I want is a 
chance in your life that I may prove myself 
to you.' Then I replied, *If this is what 
you want, just come in and we will talk it 
over.' He then came in never to go out 
again. I went to my little shack-room 
and, locking the door, took out of a little 
old hair-covered trunk a Bible my mother 
had given me; it had lain there for thirty 
long years untouched. I opened it and 
read a while and then got down on my 
knees to pray. What I said was about 
like this: *Lord, if it is really the Lord 
who was talking to me (I have my doubts), 
you know I am a man of my word, and you 
can trust me. I want to make you a 
proposition: I'll do the square thing by 
you if you'll do the same by me. 
Amen!'" 

"This," said he, "was the beginning of 



56 TRAIL TALES 

the struggle for rest to my soul; and I 
found it." 

An incident leading to his immediate, 
possibly ultimate safety, was a conversa- 
tion in a saloon. It does not always 
transpire that we are benefited by the act 
of the talebearer, but in this case it was 
highly salutary. One of his engineer friends, 
drinking at the bar, said: "Never fear 

about H . He will soon get over all 

this and be along with us as usual." 

Hearing it, he became very righteously 
indignant and said: ''By the grace of God, 
never! I'll go up to the church my wife 
attends and join with her, and when they 
know I am a church member they'll let 
me alone." He did so at once. He was 
saved. He lived for many years, always 
happy, always helpful, and without fear 
he ascended the snowy hills of old age, 
with their enveloping mists. 

Afflicted with a creeping paralysis, he 
lingered long, ever cheerful, and interested 
in his friends, to whom he sent many mes- 
sages. To his brothers of the Odd Fellows 
he sent this message: "Boys, I'll not see 
you any more. I am just like a boy at 



THE IRON TRAIL 57 

Christmas Eve, who with stocking hung up, 
is anxious for dayhght. The shadows have 
come over me. My stocking is hung up 
by the Father's fireplace and I am almost 
impatient for the morning. I haven't the 
remotest idea what I will get, but I am 
sure it will be something good." A few 
days before his translation he was visited 
by one of his old-time railway associates, 

who said to him: "H , you are now up 

against the real thing, according to your 
belief; and it looks to us the same, just as 
if you would have to go some one of these 
days. How does it seem.? What is it 
like.?^" 

Looking at the questioner lovingly, the 
dying man said, "Charley, you've worked 
for the railway company a long time, and 
never had many promotions, have you.'^" 

"Yes, about twenty years — and no pro- 
motions." 

"Well, Charley, suppose there'd come to 
you to-day a wire from headquarters saying 
there's a big promotion waiting for you on 
your arrival, and at the same time a pass 
for your free transportation. How do 
you think that would seem to you?" 



58 TRAIL TALES 

"My soul, but that'd be fine," said he. 

"Well, Charley, that's just my case ex- 
actly," said the radiant man. "I've been 
working for God and his company for about 
that same length of time and never had 
much promotion so far as I could see, and 
now I have a summons direct from the 
glory land telling me there's a big ad- 
vancement for me, and it sounds mighty 
good." 

He was dressed for the wedding, the 
Christmas morning, or whatever awaited 
him, and was anxious that the couriers of 
the King should come. When the moment 
came the old engineer's headlight was un- 
dimmed, the switch signals showed green, 
and when he called for the last board at 
the home station the signal came back: 
"All's well; come on in." 

He had received his coveted promotion. 



AN UNUSUAL KINDNESS 

That best portion of a good man's life — 

His little, nameless, unremembered acts 

Of kindness and of love. 

— Wordsworth. 

The Methodist locomotive engineer had 
died joyful. "I am so glad to go," he 
said. "I am like a boy when there's a 
circus in town; I've got the price, and my 
baggage is checked clear through." 

I was holding a memorial service for him 
in his old home town, and at the close a 
big, broad-shouldered man came forward to 
the altar rail and quietly said, "You did 
not know that man." 

The remark startled me a little, for I 
had been acquainted with him for many 
years; in fact, had once been his pastor. 

"I thought I did," replied I. 

"No, you never really knew him," was 
the insistent rejoinder; "let me tell you 
something about him. Years ago I was 
not living as I ought, and I had all sorts of 

59 



60 TRAIL TALES 

trouble. My wife was very sick, and we 
were living in a bit of a shack back here a 
little way where she finally died. I was 
down and out. The fellows wanted to be 
good to me, and they were — in their way 
of thinking — but it did me no good. They 
would say, 'Come, brace up, old fellow, 
have a drink and forget your troubles.' 
But there are some troubles drink will not 
drown; mine was one of them. 

*'One night our friend came up to my 
shack, and having visited a while he said: 
*01d man, you're up against it hard, ain't 
you.?' I replied, 'Yes, I am, just up to the 
Hmit.' 'Well, let's pray about it.' I told 
him I didn't believe in prayer. 'All right,' 
said he, 'I do, and I'll pray any way.' You 
should have heard the prayer he made. It 
was about like this: 'God, here's my friend, 
Charley; he's in an awful fix. We'll have 
to do something for him. I've done all I 
can; now, it's up to you to see him through. 
Amen.' 

"Then he arose from his knees and, 
handing me his check book, he said, 'My 
wife and I ain't got much, only a couple o' 
thousand in the bank; but here's this 



THE IRON TRAIL 61 

check book all signed up; take it and use 
it all if you need it, and God bless you !' 

"But," added the narrator of the story, 
"I couldn't use money like that." 

The tears were fast falling over his 
bronzed cheeks as he told with tenderness 
the story, and as I looked into his eyes I 
knew that through knowledge of the dead 
engineer's kingly kindness had come to him 
the knowledge of the new life. 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 



Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn. 

— Burns. 





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CHIEF JOSEPH, XEZ PERCE INDIAN 



INTRODUCTORY WORDS 

Indian character is human character be- 
cause the Indian is human. Being human 
he is susceptible to all human teaching and 
experiences. None yields more readily to 
love and kindness. 

Few can speak of the Indian with abso- 
lute propriety, for very few know him. 
To the mind of most Americans, I venture 
to say, the very name "Indian" suggests 
scalpings, massacres, outrages of all kinds 
and an interminable list of kindred horrors; 
all too true. But it must be remembered 
that the Indian presented to his first dis- 
coverers a race most tractable, tender- 
hearted, and responsive to kindness. He 
was indeed the child of the plain, but a 
loving child. 

The chevaliers both of Spanish and Eng- 
lish blood taught him in the most practical 
manner the varied refinements of deceit, 
treachery, and cruelty. He was an apt 
scholar, and the devotee of social heredity, 

65 



66 TRAIL TALES 

which has here so striking an example, 
cannot curse the redman if the sins of the 
fathers are meted out to succeeding gen- 
erations. 

Under definite heads I am giving some 
very brief sketches of Hving, down-to-date 
aborigines, such as have come under my 
own observation in Utah and Idaho. 



POCATELLO, THE CHIEF 

The nodding horror of whose shady brows 
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger. 

— Milton, 

Fort Hall Reservation, until 1902, em- 
braced a large territory of which Pocatello 
was the center. These Idaho red people 
are the remnants of the once powerful 
tribes of the Bannocks and Shoshones, 
which ranged from the Blue Mountains in 
Oregon to the backbone of the Rocky- 
Mountains. The compressing processes 
used by the aggressive white people have 
encircled, curtailed, and squeezed their 
borders so that now they are centered at 
Fort Hall, half way between Pocatello and 
Blackfoot. Here the government has a 
school for them, and the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church a mission. 

Pocatello is named for a wily old chief 
of that name, who became an outlaw to 
be reckoned with. He once led a cavalcade 
of his sanguinary followers against the 

67 



68 TRAIL TALES 

newly made non-Mormon town of Corinne, 
Utah; but a Mormon who had been notified 
of the proposed massacre, by a corehgionist, 
Hkewise told a friend among the Gentiles, 
and a precautionary counter plan was for- 
mulated. Nothing more came of it than 
an evening visit from Brigham Young and 
his staff, who, as reported, pronounced and 
prophesied an awful and exterminating 
curse upon the town and people. How- 
ever, because of the warning, his curses 
went elsewhere. 

Until recently there lived in the region 
of the city of Pocatello an old squaw-man 
(white man with an Indian wife). His 
home was within the borders of the reser- 
vation, and he had been there since before 
the time when the boundary line between 
the United States and England (Canada) 
was settled. The old man was called 
"Doc," and once when visiting him I said, 
"Tell me about old Pocatello, Doc, and 
what became of him." 

The old man, half reclining on the pile 
of household debris in one corner of his 
shanty, permitted me to sit by the door — 
for there were no chairs in the place. The 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 69 

four corners were occupied as follows: in 
one were his saddle and accouterments for 
range work; in another the accumulation of 
rags and blankets on which he slept (for he 
lived alone now, the wife being dead); in 
another was his little st'ove, and the last 
held the door where I sat. The air was 
fresher there, I thought. The veteran of 
eighty or more years, bronzed by the 
winds and roughened by the sweeping 
sands of the desert, lighted his pipe and 
said: "It war in the days o' them freighters 
who operated 'tween Corinne an' Virginny 
City when Alder Gulch was a-goin' chock 
full o' business. The Forwardin' Company 
hed a mighty big lot o' rollin' stock an' 
hosses to keep the traffic up. The hull 
kentry was Injun from put-ni' Corinne to 
that there Montanny town. The Bear 
Rivers an' the Fort Hall tribes, the Ban- 
nocks an' the Blackfeet uste to make life 
anything but a Fourth-o'-July picnic fer 
them fellers an' their drivers. Right h'yur 
was the natterelest campin' place fer the 
Company, or, ruther, a natterel spot fer 
the stage-station, where they could git the 
stock fresh an' new an' go on, as they hed 



70 TRAIL TALES 

to do, night an' day, so's to keep business 
a-movin', ye see. Fer 'twas a mighty long 
rout fer passengers. 

''Now, Pocatello an' his bunch o' red 
devils got into the habit o' runnin' off the 
stock, an' sometimes the Company'd haf to 
wait half a day to git enough teams to go 
on north; or to wait till the fagged ones'd 
git a little rest an' then push on wi' the 
same ones. Mr. Salisbury, of Salt Lake, 
was the head o' the Forwardin' Company, 
an' he an' his people got mighty all-fired 
tired o' that sort o' business. Hosses was 
dear them days, but Injuns was cheap; so 
he told a lot o' us'ns he'd like tarnation 
well if this sort o' thing'd stop kind o' 
sudden like; an' we planned it might be 
done jist that way too. 

"We kind o' laid low, an' nothin' hap- 
pened fer quite a while; but one night a 
fine bunch o' hosses was run off jist when 
they's a big lot o' treasure goin' over the 
line, an' the management was sure mad. 
They told us 'uns agin somethin' had to be 
done, an' despert quick this time. So we 
got busy. We begun to round ol' Pocatello 
up, an' he seemed to smell a rat or some- 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 71 

thin' wuss, an' started up Pocatello Crick 
yander, that there canon, see? He went 
almighty fast too when he got started; so 
did we, now I tell you, an' we jist kep' 
a-foller'n', an' f oiler 'n', an' f oiler 'n', we did 
— a hull lot ov us — an' — an' — an' Pocatello 
never come back." 

Then the old squaw-man tapped the 
ashes from his pipe, and rising said, "Well, 
I guess I'll cinch up the cayuse an' ride 
some this a'ternoon." 



THE BABYLESS MOTHER 

Rachel weeping for her children, and would not 
be comforted, because they are not. — Saint Matthew. 

One of the many signs that the .Indian is 
human is his slowness to learn. Ever since 
1492 the whiter man has been trying to force 
some supposedly useful things into the mind 
of him of the darker skin. One of these is 
that he of the blanket has no rights that he 
of the dress coat is bound to respect. The 
Indian rises in practical debate to this 
question. His arguments are not words, 
but the rifle and the scalping-knife. The 
whiter man demurs when he receives 
his justice dished up to him in redskin 
style. 

It is unreasonable to the Indian that the 
white man should take from him his hunt- 
ing grounds and limit his access to the very 
streams whence his people for ages un- 
countable filled their pantries for the winter. 

72 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 73 

He has learned to his disgust (without 
place for repentance) that equivalents are 
equivocations, and that the little baubles 
the fathers of the tribes had for their 
broad acres were mostly worthless. The 
civilized trick of procuring the mystic sign 
manual known as signature had fastened on 
them the gyves of perpetual poverty. 

In addition to this, the nation demanded 
they should send their children to the 
white man's school in the far, far away 
Eastern land, where they could not see 
them and from which so many of the red- 
faced lads and lassies returned with that 
dread disease, pulmonary tuberculosis. But 
they were only Indians, and what rights 
had they.f^ When boys and girls were not 
promptly surrendered, the soldiers were 
sent to chase them down. It would not 
seem good to us to have big, brawny 
Indians on horseback give chase to our 
children, and catch and tie them like so 
many hogs, to be carted off to a land 
unknown to us; but then these are only 
Indians. That makes all the difference 
imaginable. 

Some years ago the Fort Hall Indians 



74 TRAIL TALES 

went on their usual trip to the edge of 
Yellowstone Park — ^Jackson's Hole — ^for the 
purpose of laying in their annual supply of 
elk and bear meat. The government had 
forbidden this, yet they went, with their 
indispensable paraphernalia and camp 
equipage, taking the squaws (and papooses, 
of course) to dress and care for whatever 
of provision fell into their hands. 

When it was discovered that the Indians 
had gone in the face of the prohibitory 
order the soldiers were sent to drive them 
out. Such racing and chasing! "Wild 
horse, wild Indian, wild horseman," as 
Washington Irving puts it. Every man 
and woman for himself now. Papooses 
were slung on the saddle-horns of their 
mothers' horses, a loop being fastened to 
the back of the board to which every little 
copperfaced tike was strapped. In one of 
the hard flights through the thickly fallen 
and storm-twisted pines, firs, and chaparral 
a mother, pressed too hard by the soldiers 
and cavalry, lost her baby. 

Her tribal friends ventured back after all 
was safe, and with an Indian's trail-finding 
tact hunted high and low, far and wide, 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 75 

but no trace was ever found of the wee 
baby. 

"But, then, what mattered it? It was 
nothing but an Indian baby, and its mother 
only an Indian squaw! Who cares for a 
squaw any way?" 



MARY MUSKRAT 

Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and 
the greatest of these is love. — Saint Paul. 

When the ''teacher" first went among 
the Indians at Fort Hall her reception 
was neither cordial nor cold, for she was 
not received at all. She had not been in- 
vited and she was not welcome. For the 
first eighteen months after reaching the fort 
she could often hear in the nighttime the 
movement of a moccasin, as some tired 
Indian spy changed his cramped position, 
for she was religiously watched and irre- 
ligiously suspected. They could not under- 
stand why she, an unmarried white woman, 
should leave her home and spend time 
among them. 

The braves strode by her in sullen silence, 
eloquently impressing their contumelious 
hauteur. The no less stolid squaws, who 
observe everything and see nothing, dis- 
dainfully covered their faces with their 
blankets or looked in silence in the opposite 

76 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 77 

direction when the teacher met them or 
hfted the tent-flap. 

After a long time she won her way with 
some of the wee ones, and thus touched 
the hearts of the mothers, through whom 
she made a road broad and wide into the 
affections of the tribe. They trusted her 
with the secrets of the people, and she was 
at home in every teepee in the reservation. 
Gathering the girls together, she taught 
them the beautiful words of the Bible, and 
for many years she lived, loved, and labored 
there. 

Mary Muskrat was one of the Bannock 
girls in the mission school. The little 
shrinking, more-than-half-wild papoose of 
the desert had been toilsomely but surely 
trained by the teacher, that bravest of 
little women. 

Pulmonary consumption is the bane of 
the civilized Indians. It carries them off 
in multitudes. Despite their outdoor living, 
it seems that few, if any, ever recover from 
an attack. The dread disease had fastened 
itself upon Mary and she was sick unto 
death. Her little shack was no fit place 
for a living person, and here was one 



78 TRAIL TALES 

dying. Frequent visits from her teacher 
afforded the dying maiden her only rehef. 
Once, after watching her through a severe 
paroxysm of coughing, it seemed that hfe 
had gone completely. Removing the 
squalid bunch of rags which served as a 
pillow, and lowering the head, the devoted 
teacher stood watching the supposed lifeless 
form. But she saw the lips moving, and, 
bending low, she heard the dying girl whis- 
per, "What time I am afraid I will trust in 
Thee." Continuing, she breathed out, "The 
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
. . . Yea, though I walk through the valley 
and the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." 
Pausing, while the heart of the white 
woman was praising God for his goodness 
to the dusky child, Mary opened her beau- 
tiful eyes, and, seeing her protectress and 
benefactress standing there, said, "O, dear 
teacher, the Lord is my shepherd." 

Then the Shepherd came and took her 
to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 



BAD BEN 

A little child shall lead them. — Isaiah, 

Ben's daughter, Mary,^ was the delight 
of the old man's heart. She had been 
taken most unwillingly, so far as both 
were concerned, and placed in one of the 
Eastern schools for Indian youths. Ben 
had objected strenuously, but the stronger 
arm prevailed. 

The teacher at the mission had never in 
all her many years in that place felt fear 
until after Mary was taken away. When 
the father would come to the school to 
ask for news of her, he had his face painted 
black, indicating madness or war — *'bad 
heart" he called it. The little woman who 
had won the hearts of the people did not 
know what the enraged man might do or 
when he would do it. Once, after many 
such terrifying visits, he volunteered the 
information that he was making him a 

» Mary is a very frequent name among the Baimocks of Fort Hall. 
79 



80 TRAIL TALES 

house and a farm *'all same witee man." 
He had built it of some railroad ties he had 
found and had begun to cultivate a garden 
and cut some wild hay. "Me makee heap 
good wikiup, all same witee man; Mary 
he all same witee squaw, by 'um by." 

The white plague is the only disease the 
Indian fears or calls sickness. Once, when 
Ben went to the school where a dozen or so 
other happy-faced little girls were being 
taught and prepared for the Eastern school, 

Miss F was obliged to tell him Mary 

was sick. For a while his savagery was 
apparently renewed. He became wild again. 
His visits increased in frequency, and all 
the time the teacher was in mental torture, 
for he seemed to feel that the white woman 
was in some manner connected with his 
child's going away and her present con- 
dition. 

The dread day came when she must tell 
the loving father that there was now no 
hope for his "liF gal," as he affectionately 
called her. Then another more dreaded day 
rolled round, and the last story must be 
told: Mary had died. She would be buried 
in the far east. Poor old father ! He could 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 81 

not even see her then. How could he be 
made to understand? 

The only solution of the problem was the 
holding of a memorial service for her. One 
of the Pocatello pastors went up to hold 
such a service at the Agency and Ben was 
present. He was told that if he lived with 
his heart clean, "no have bad heart/' he 
would see his Mary again. No one could 
tell to what extent this message found place 
in his mind until later. One day he was 
seen approaching the mission school slowly 

and apparently sorrowful. Miss F met 

him at the door. On entering he said, "0, 

Miss F , bad Injun no liky me have hay, 

no liky me have wikiup all same witee man. 
Bad Injun burn me up; all me wikiup, all 
me hay, all me everyt'ing. But me no 
have bad heart [that means, "I do not hate 

them"], me no have bad heart. Miss F ; 

me no have bad heart; me want see my lil' 
gal some day." 

So the lonesome man went away to his 
one-time home to try to live among the 
unchristian and unprogressive Indians with- 
out having any hatred toward them, for he 
wanted to meet his Mary. 



A THREE-CORNERED SERMON 

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my 
mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it 
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall 
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. — Isaiah. 

Thy word, Almighty Lord, 

Where'er it enters in 
Is sharper than a two-edged sword 

To slay the man of sin. 

— Montgomery. 

A PECULIAR wireless telegraphy has ever 
been in vogue among the aborigines of 
many lands. The interior tribes of Africa 
have it and use it to perfection. The 
plains Indians and those of the mountains 
know its use, and messages are sent which 
cause much wonderment to the white man. 

In 1899 the ghost-dancing was in progress 
among all the Indians of the United States. 
All Indiandom was excited to the highest 
degree. Disturbances among them were 
watched and feared by the government. 
The Bannocks and Shoshones of Fort Hall 

82 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 83 

were nerved to a high tension and quickly 
athrill to any new movement. Hearing that 
an unusual interest was being displayed 
among the Nez Perces of the north, a 
committee of the Fort Hall men was sent 
to ascertain what it was. It proved to be 
a revival of religion conducted by the 
Presbyterians. The committee was com- 
posed of heathens, but they saw, were 
conquered, and came home reporting it 
was good, and requested that there be 
similar meetings held among them. It was 
so planned and arranged. A Nez Perce 
Presbyterian minister was to be their visit- 
ant evangelist. 

The various Protestant churches in Poca- 
tello had been by turns supplying preaching 
to the people of Fort Hall's tribes, and to 
the whites who were the residents at Ross 
Fork, the seat of the Agency. On the 
particular evening when the special meet- 
ings were to begin it was the turn of the 
writer to preach. The Rev. James Hays, 
a full-blood Nez Perce, was there as evan- 
gelist. But he could not speak a word of 
the Bannock-Shoshone mixed jargonized 
dialect. He had been educated in English 



84 TRAIL TALES 

and could understand me so as to interpret, 
rather translate into Nez Perce, but who 
could reach the people to whom we had 
the message? There was present a renegade 
fellow, Pat Tyhee (big Pat, or chief Pat), 
not an Irishman, He was a Shoshone who 
years before had gone to live among the 
Nez Perces and had married a woman of 
them. He could interpret Hays, but could 
he be trusted? He was a very heathenish 
heathen. The missionary teacher. Miss 
Frost, consulted with Mr. Hays and my- 
self as to the wisdom of asking Pat to play 
interpreter for the momentous occasion; 
after fervently praying we concluded to 
take the risk and trust to God's leading. 
Pat, the heathen, was chosen. It was a 
queer audience. There were some whites, 
some Indians. It was odd to see Gun, the 
Agency policeman, there with his only 
prisoner. There were Billy George, the 
tribal judge; and Hubert Tetoby, the as- 
sistant blacksmith, as well as others of 
local importance. To add to the excite- 
ment of the evening, it was the night be- 
fore ration day at the Agency, when all the 
Indians from the entire Reservation were 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 85 

present — fifteen hundred of them — for their 
share. It was a wild time — the raw 
blanketed man was there for a Saturnalia. 
He knew no law but his desires. The 
unprotected young woman had no security 
from him. Indeed, while we were gathering 
in the mission house for this service, I 
noticed a slight stirring at my feet, and 
looked, and there was Mary, a young 
widow, who had scuttled in silent as a 
partridge and was snuggling down on the 
floor just back of my feet, successful in 
getting away from some red Lothario who 
had pursued her to the door. 

The service began. I preached from the 
words of Martha to Mary, "The Master is 
come and is calling for thee." It was an 
attempt to show that Jesus needs us as 
living agents to work with him. Mr. Hays, 
I suppose, and always have believed, trans- 
lated to Pat in Nez Perce what I said. 
Pat in turn interpreted to the assembled 
band of mixed Indians. To be sure, I 
understood not a thing either said: but 
when I looked at the earnest, love-ridden, 
and sweat-covered face of the yearning Nez 
Perce, I believed that what he was saying 



86 TRAIL TALES 

was all I said and more. And Pat — he was 
a sight! Had his hands been tied, I really 
believed he could not have expressed him- 
self at all. He is about six feet six in his moc- 
casins, and those long arms accompanied 
the lengthy guttural expressions in an in- 
tensely effective manner. At the close of 
the three-cornered sermon the question was 
asked, "How many of you from this time 
forward are willing to follow Jesus and be 
known as his assistants?" Among the most 
prominent and enthusiastic replies that 
came were those of Hubert Tetoby, Billy 
George, and Pat Tyhee, the heathen inter- 
preter. Looking me straight in the eyes, 
swerving neither to the one side nor the 
other, these madly-in-earnest men of the 
mountains held their hands up high as 
they could reach them. And in six weeks 
from that date there was a Presbyterian 
church there composed of sixty-five mem- 
bers, of whom only one, the teacher. Miss 
Frost, was white; and Pat Tyhee was 
made one of the elders. There had been 
no Christians there at all before those 
meetings. It was an Indian Pentecost. 



THREE YEARS AFTER 

Father of all ! in every age. 

In every clime adored. 
By saint, by savage, and by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. 

— Alexander Pope. 

Some hypercritical person, and possibly 
some sincere soul, may ask: ''Did such 
revival do any permanent good? Does not 
the so-near savage easily backslide?" To 
this may be given this partial reply: It 
depends somewhat on the sort of white 
folks there are in the immediate vicinity. 
As elsewhere stated in these pages, the pale 
face has been the great undoer of the 
red man. "Civilization" in some garbs is 
worse than savagery. The white skin has 
been the password for some awful systems 
of debauchery among the aborigines of 
America. An Indian speaker, and chief of 
police of one of the Indian reservations of 
Oregon, said at the Second World's Chris- 
tian Citizenship Conference in Portland, 

87 



88 TRAIL TALES 

1913: "Before the white man came the 
Indian had no jails or locks on their doors. 
The white man brought whisky; there is 
now need of both jails and locks." 

About three years after the meeting at 
Fort Hall, where the three-cornered sermon 
was delivered, Mr. Roosevelt made a visit 
to the West. Major A. F. Caldwell, Agent 
of Indian Affairs at Fort Hall, told the 
fourteen hundred red natives that if they 
would turn out in their handsomest man- 
ner, he would give them all a '*big eat" 
after the visit. Promptly on the day desig- 
nated the famous rough rider and the 
desert riders were in evidence, the latter 
in abundance. They went far out along 
the railway to meet the train, and then 
galloped their wiry, pintoed ponies along 
by the side of the car, performing many 
feats of daring horsemanship, throwing 
themselves from the flying bronchos and 
remounting without a pause, and other 
stunts which they invented. After the 
"pageant had fled" the expectant and 
hungry Indians were herded into a large 
vacant lot in Pocatello, where all sorts of 
provisions had been collected for the feast. 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 89 

I was anxious to see them, and so were 
many other equally bold and possibly a 
wee bit impolite people, for when they 
had assembled a great crowd of curious 
white folks was there gazing. 

The Young Men's Christian Association 
secretary and I overlooked the scene from 
a hotel whose wall formed one side of the 
enclosure where the long tables of loose 
planks were laid. All was hurry, bustle, 
and confusion, not much unlike what every- 
one has witnessed at the ordinary picnic. 

The Christians and the non-Christians 
had divided as though not of the same 
tribe or blood. These had their tables on 
one side, those on the opposite. When all 
was ready the savage part of the divided 
company fell to with vim, vigor, and haste, 
just as white people often do at outdoor 
dinners; but see the others! After all had 
been carefully spread, odorous cans of 
tempting viands opened, and everything 
adjusted, the hungry horde was seated. A 
low word of attention was given by some 
one; every head was bowed, quiet was 
absolute, and Billy George in guttural tones 
said something the Lord of all could under- 



90 TRAIL TALES 

stand. When he was through these also 
fell to with an unmistakable zest and the 
day ended merrily for the Indians and 
profitably for some of the onlookers. 

This Billy George was crippled by the 
bullets of some of the reservation Indians 
who did not like his progressive ways. He 
had lost one leg for this reason. One night, 
as he was fastening up his animals, he 
stooped to lift one of the bars of his corral. 
Just as he raised himself, a shot that was 
doubtless meant for his lowered head struck 
his leg and it had to be amputated. 

On the night of his conversion, when he 
had raised his hand high as he could reach, 
he in the after meeting mimicked the white 
folks who had slowly and with many side- 
lookings so slightly moved their hands up- 
ward. He said, "Huh, white folks heap 
scared, do this way;" and he imitated them 
grotesquely. 

Often when leaving his teepee for the hills 
in order to haul his winter wood, he would 
go to the home of Miss F , the mis- 
sionary, and tell her he was going away, 
and at the same time asking her to be sure 
to care for his squaw and papooses if he 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 91 

did not return; for, said he, "Bad Injun 
ketchy me some day; no liky me; you savy 
me liky whity man." 

So fair of mind was he, and so humanely 
progressive, that the government had chosen 
him as one of the men before whom petty 
cases among the tribe were taken. If he 
could not solve the problems, they were 
then carried to the Agent; then on up if 
not there adjusted. 

When the Presbyterian Missionary Board 
assisted these Christians to build a neat 
house of worship it was, and still is, known 
far and near as Billy George's Church. 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND HIS LOST 
WALLOWA 

Land where my fathers died. — Smith. 

A CoRNiSHMAN was once asked why there 
were no public houses (saloons) in his town. 
He replied, "Once a man by the name of 
John Wesley preached here, and there have 
been none since." 

Once a man by the name of General 
O. O. Howard passed through eastern 
Oregon and northern Idaho, and the coun- 
try has not been the same since. The occa- 
sion was the uprising of the Nez Perces 
Indians in 1877. Ridpath, the historian, 
tells of the long chase of the red men and 
the weary pursuit of "sixteen hundred 
miles." It was truly a Fabian retreat on 
the part of Chief Joseph and his band, but 
General Howard was dealing mercifully with 
them; at a dozen places he could have given 
battle, but he spared the useless slaughter, 
avoiding the needless scaring of the white 

92 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 93 

settlers and the complement of dire scenes 
and death that would necessarily follow. 

The story of Chief Joseph is one of the 
most interesting unwritten chapters in the 
history of the great Northwest. The fact 
of the capture of this wily Indian leader 
with most of his band is well known. They 
were banished from the Alpine regions of 
eastern Oregon and compelled to make 
their home across the marble canon of the 
Snake in the State of Idaho, far from their 
loved Wallowa. 

The valley of Wallowa (an Indian name) 
is one of the most beautiful spots imag- 
inable. At its southern end stand pillared 
peaks, eternally snow-crowned, rivaling the 
finest to be seen in Switzerland. Here lies 
the limpid, glassy Lake Wallowa, near the 
busy town of Joseph, so named in honor of 
the great chieftain. This emerald valley 
nestles in the lap of the Blue Mountains, 
and was from time immemorial the favorite 
home of the exiled natives. When Bonne- 
ville passed through that remote region in 
the early thirties they were in the enjoy- 
ment of that valley and the rugged recesses 
of the Imnaha between Oregon and Walla 



94 TRAIL TALES 

Walla. The famous red fish, the yank, and 
others possibly peculiar to the place were 
found in abundance in the lake. It was 
their treasure house for finny food, and 
the hovering hills furnished flesh of deer 
and bear. 

At a point in the valley twenty miles 
north of the lake. Old Joseph, father of the 
more famous son, lies buried; his bramble- 
covered grave is to be seen by the roadside 
to-day. For this reason something more 
than an instinctive affection dominated the 
heart of the younger man. 

Not long before his death, accompanied 
by guards. Chief Joseph was taken into the 
valley on some sort of errand, and was 
thus permitted to see again the enchanting 
beauties of his birthplace and early home. 
How hungry were his eyes as he viewed the 
great opaline pool which reflected the 
sinewy cedars and pointed pines; as he 
looked upon the surrounding glen, the an- 
cient game-range, the distant dissolving 
plain, the hills heightening through their 
timber-covered sides up to the very sky! 
His bursting heart cried out, ''I have but 
one thing to ask for from the White Father; 





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rftililltff -^ ^ 1 


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■1. i 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 95 

Give me this lake and the land around it, 
and some few acres surrounding the grave 
of my father." 

The white man's ax had cleared the 
timber about the old man's grave; the 
white man's plow might menace the sacred 
sod above the mute dust of his honored 
sire. He wished to protect that place hal- 
lowed by love — his own father's grave. But 
his plea was denied. He was not permitted 
to have what in all reason seemed his very 
own. 

He was now an old man, with eyes that 
had never shed tears, a soul that was un- 
acquainted with fear, and a heart that had 
never weakened in the presence of danger. 
But at the thought that he was no more to 
see his lovely Wallowa his eyes melted, his 
soul sank, his heart broke. 

Chief Joseph died near Spokane not many 
years since, wailing out the one great desire 
of his life, a final glimpse of the land of his 
birth, the hunting ground of his manhood 
and the graves of his sires. 



THE WHITE MAN'S BOOK 

The book — this holy book, on every line 
Mark'd with the seal of high divinity, 
On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love 
Divine, and with the eternal heraldry 
And signature of God Almighty stampt 
From first to last — this ray of sacred light, 
This lamp, from off the everlasting throne, 
Mercy took down, and, in the night of time 
Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow; 
And evermore beseeching men, with tears 
And earnest sighs, to read, believe, and live; 
And many to her voice gave ear, and read. 
Believed, obey'd. 

—Pollok. 

Having heard the early explorers speak 
of God, the Bible, and religion, and knowing 
that on Sundays the flag was raised and 
work suspended, the Indians wanted to 
know more about these things, and two 
chiefs, Hee-oh'ks-te-kin (Rabbit-skin Leg- 
gins) and H'co-a-h'co-a-cotes-min (No- 
horns-on-his-Head) set out to find the 
white missionaries who could inform their 
troubled minds. They did not reach Saint 

96 



INDIANS OF THE TRAIL 97 

Louis until 1832, where they found General 
Clark, whom they had known. The mes- 
sengers were of the Nez Perce tribe. Gen- 
eral Clark took them to the cathedral and 
showed them the pictures of the saints and 
entertained them in the best and most ap- 
proved Christian style; but they were heart- 
hungry and went home dissatisfied. One of 
them made the following speech to the 
kindly soldier. General Clark: 

"I came to you over a trail of many 
moons from the setting sun. You were the 
friend of my fathers who have all gone the 
long way. I came with one eye partly 
opened, for more light for my people who 
sit in darkness. I go back with both eyes 
closed. How can I go back with both eyes 
closed.? How ca'n I go back blind to my 
blind people .f^ I made my way to you with 
strong arms, through many enemies and 
strange lands, that I might carry much 
back to them. I go back with both arms 
broken and empty. The two fathers who 
came with us — the braves of many winters 
and wars — we leave asleep by your great 
water and wigwam.^ They were tired in 

1 Four of their number had died, and only one reached home. 



98 TRAIL TALES 

many moons, and their moccasins wore out. 
My people sent me to get the white man's 
Book of heaven. You took me where you 
allow your women to dance, as we do not 
ours, and the Book was not there; you 
showed me the images of the good spirits 
and the pictures of the good land beyond, 
but the Book was not among them to tell 
us the way. I am going back the long, sad 
trail to my people of the dark land. You 
make my feet heavy with the burden of 
gifts, and my moccasins will grow old in 
carrying them, but the Book is not among 
them. When I tell my poor, blind people, 
after one more snow, in the big council, 
that I did not bring the Book, no word 
will be spoken by our old men or our young 
braves. One by one they will rise up and 
go out in silence. My people will die in 
darkness, and they will go on the long 
path to the other hunting grounds. No 
white man will go with them and no white 
man's Book will make the way plain. I 
have no more words." 

It was the rumor of this address that 
started Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman 
westward over the old Trail. 



LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS 



I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills. 
My heart with rapture thrills. 

— Smith. 



LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS 

The Old Oregon Trail takes bold way 
through some of the very finest scenery of 
the West. These new ships of the desert, 
the passenger trains, glide gracefully down 
from the aerial highways of the mountain 
passes into the heart of our fertile oases. 
Whichever way the traveler turns he sees 
something absolutely new, and often in 
strange contrast with what he has just 
been beholding. Stately, snow-crowned 
giants of the lordly hills, fir-fringed up to 
timber line, stand motherlike, or bishop- 
like, crozier-cragged, shepherding the ver- 
dant uplands and the velvety valleys whose 
billowy meadows bend beneath the high- 
land zephyrs or fall before the scythe of 
the prospering farmer. Now he beholds 
the ruggedest of capacious canons where 
the rollicking rivers and rhythmic rills have 
cut great gorges deep into the rocky ribs of 
the tightly hugging hills. Another turn 
and he sees the hearty herds transforming 
themselves automatically inco gold for their 

101 



102 TRAIL TALES 

happy owners; another turn shows the lazy 
rivers arising from their age-long beds and 
mossy couches to climb the hot hillsides and 
to toil and sweat at the command of the 
lord of this world, as they irrigate his arid 
acres. Yet another turn and the wrathful 
river is carrying on its breast the tens of 
thousands of winter-cut logs dancing like 
straws on its frothy surface on their way 
to the busy mills; and the turbulent 
streams, their wildness tamed and har- 
nessed, serve the needs of man like trusted 
domestic servants. 

But this is not the way to view moun- 
tains; it is only surface sights we get in this 
manner. He who would know the beauties 
of the hills must become acquainted with 
them personally and on foot. Anyone can 
enjoy the lazy luxury of the cozy precincts 
of an upholstered, porter-served car. He 
may travel horseback or donkey-back, if he 
cares to visit only where such sure-footed 
animals can go. However, when I want to 
see the stately things among the unchiseled 
palaces and temples where Nature pays 
homage in the courts of the Divine Archi- 
tect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and 



LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS 103 

with well-nailed shoes, rough clothes, a 
staff, and a lunch, I take the kingdom by 
force. When once in, I am royally enter- 
tained; for though coy and apparently hard 
to woo, Nature is a most delightful com- 
panion when once you are acquainted. 

The distant mountains, that uprear 
Their solid bastions to the skies, 

Are crossed by pathways, that appear 
As we to higher levels rise. 

So sang Longfellow. Bishop Warren said 
that every peak tempted him as with a 
beckoning finger, daring him to a climb. 

To those who have never been nearer the 
unlocked fastnesses of our eternal American 
hills than by the too common means above 
mentioned, the far-away cliffs of marble or 
white granite, with their areas of unmelt- 
able snows and ices, look temptingly down 
on us in August, together with the smaller 
and less inspiring crags. But when we ap- 
proach them, even those nearest, how they 
appear to recede — almost to run away! 
The high peaks that looked as though 
climbing up and peeping over the heads of 
the lower ones, either jump down and 



104 TRAIL TALES 

bashfully run to hide, or the little ones 
rise up to protect them. So it seems as one 
approaches. 

Entering the mountain side by way of a 
yawning canon we soon come to a sheer 
precipice lying in a deep gorge with per- 
pendicular sides, while, leaping from the 
top of the declivity high above our heads, as 
if from the very zenith, a stream of crystal 
water cleaves the air. It is dashed into 
countless strands of silvery pearls before 
it reaches the deep bed of moss spread 
down to receive it, and where it lies rest- 
ing awhile for its downward journey toward 
the moon-whipped ocean. 

Ah, Longfellow! You have taught us 
how to climb some mountains, but here we 
have to construct our ladders, for anyone 
less sure of foot than the chamois or the 
mountain sheep must stay at the bottom 
of the falls. Scylla and Charybdis are sta- 
tionary now, and the gaping chasm has 
swallowed us upward, where we reach an 
opening into a wide park, a veritable fairy- 
land. On the top of one of those ponderous 
laminations tilted edgewise is the king of 
the gnomes of the new glen. We call hinx 



LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS 105 

Pharaoh. How archly he looks out over 
his wide domain! His kingly cap is adorned 
with a cobra ready to strike, yet out on his 
ample breast floats a most royal but un- 
Pharonic beard. This is one of the ways 
the quondam haughty hills have of provid- 
ing entertainment for the bold questioner 
and visitor. 

The scenery is always new. High rocks, 
whose rugged faces look as if their titanic 
architect had been surprised and driven 
away while as yet his task was not half 
completed; long gaping gulches lined with 
an evergreen decoration of spruce, cedar, 
manzanita, and mountain mahogany, are 
some of the sidelights to be found in a 
day's journey in the realms adjacent to 
the Old Oregon Trail. 



THE STAGECOACH 



My high-blown pride 
At length broke under me and now has left me, 
Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 

— Shakespeare. 

Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens. . . . When 
I was at home I was in a better place; but travelers 
must be content. — Shakespeare. 



THE STAGECOACH 

At frequent intervals throughout the 
widening West may be seen the relegated 
ship of the desert standing forlorn, friend- 
less, forsaken. The merciless claws of 
summer and the icy fangs of winter are 
loosening the red paint, and the white 
canvas cover and side curtains are flapping 
in the winds. The tired tongue, dumb 
with age and years of use, still tells tales 
of hardships by the silent eloquence of its 
multitude of unhealed scars. 

This class of carryall was at once unique 
and supreme. It was the one indispensable 
link in the endless chain of evolution popular 
and powerful, the only public agent of the 
Trail and the plains until the unconquer- 
able initiative of the lord of the world had 
time to steel a highway with trackage for 
more rapid transit. What a living link was 
that old overland stage! To look upon an 
isolated and abandoned relic of earlier pio- 
neerdom is like standing at the marble mon- 

109 



110 TRAIL TALES 

ument of some human pivot in the mighty 
march of man's progress. Before the bold 
and busthng railway noisily elbowed its 
way into the affections of travel and com- 
merce and pushed aside the patient wagon 
of the nation-builders, the tens of thousands 
of hurried travelers enjoyed (or endured) 
the hospitality of its rocking thorough- 
braces as they, hour by hour, day after 
day, and night after night, and even week 
after week in the longer journeys, sat atop 
or inside this leviathan of the sand-ocean 
making the most rapid trip possible and 
under safe guidance. 

Could such old hulk tell its story, could 
that dried-up old tongue but begin to wag 
again, what tales! First would come those 
of the men too often overworked and under- 
appreciated, like our modern railmen, the 
drivers of the stage. These, as the ancient 
Jehu, were compelled to drive furiously on 
occasion, in order to keep a cramped 
schedule or make up for the loss of time 
brought about by a breakdown, a washout, 
or some Indian depredation. Few drivers 
there were who did not love their work. It 
came to be a saying, "Once a driver, always 



THE STAGECOACH 111 

a driver." The eoach-and-four, or more, 
with booted and belted man on the throne 
of the swinging chariot, made every boy 
envious and created in him a desire to be- 
come great some day too. Eagle and Dick, 
Tom and Rock, Bolly and Bill understood 
the snap of the whip, or its more wicked 
crack, as well as they did the tension of the 
line or the word of the chief charioteer, 
who, with foot on the long brake-beam, 
regulated the speed of the often crowded 
vehicle down the precipitous places which 
to the novice looked very dangerous. But 
Jehu is no longer universal king. A Pharaoh 
who knew him not has heartlessly and defi- 
nitely usurped some of his places. 

In the boot of this old seaworthy craft 
was hauled many a load of treasure, for the 
gold-hungry prospector without sextant and 
chain surveyed the fastnesses of the hills 
as well as the illimitation of the prairies, 
and a care-taking government made a way 
to his camp to send him his mail. Express 
companies joined their traffic to that of 
Uncle Sam, and he of the pick and shovel 
became the lodestone to popular conven- 
ience. With many a load of treasure went 



112 TRAIL TALES 

a man known as a messenger, who sat beside 
the driver, carrying a sawed-off gun under 
his coat, ready to meet the gangster or 
holdup, who so often robbed both stage and 
passenger. 

In the hold of this old coach have ridden 
governors, statesmen of all grades, men and 
women, good and better (some bad and 
worse); here were bridal tours, funeral par- 
ties, commercial men and gamblers, miners 
and prospectors. Chinamen and Indians, 
pleasure-seekers and labor-hunters, officers 
and convicts. 

Men of every station 

In the eye of fame, 
On a common level 

Coming to the same — 

is the way Saxe punningly puts it; but 
more of a leveler was this old coach, for 
there was of necessity the forceful putting 
of people of the most heterogeneous .char- 
acter together in the most homogeneous 
manner as the omnibus (most literal word 
here), made up its hashy load at the hand 
and command of the driver, whose word 
was unappealable law as complete as that 



THE STAGECOACH 113 

of another captain on the high seas. Prodi- 
gal, profligate, and pure, maiden or Magda- 
lene, millionaire or Lazarus, all were 
crowded together as the needs of the hour 
and the size of the passengers demanded, 
to sit elbow to elbow, side by side to the 
journey's end. 

Huddled thus, they traveled unchanged 
till the stage station was reached; here the 
horses were exchanged for fresher ones; 
the wayside inn had its tables of provisions 
varying and varied as the region traversed. 
If in the mountains, there were likely to 
be trout, saddle of deer, steaks of bear; 
but if through the sands, there was pro- 
vided bacon or other coarser fare. Usually 
these crowds were joking and jolly, unless 
tempered by something requiring more so- 
briety, but always optimistic, for the fellow 
who became grouchy the while had gen- 
erally abundant occasion to repent and 
mend his ways. 

One day, on a road not far from where 
this is being written, the old coach was 
toiling up a long mountainside; the driver 
was drowsy and the passengers had ex- 
hausted their newest repertoire of stories 



114 TRAIL TALES 

and had lapsed into stillness such as often 
seizes a squeezed crowd. The horses were 
permitted to take their time; the dust was 
deep, the sun hot, and all possible stillness 
prevailed. 

"Halt!" ordered a low voice very near 
the road. 

The driver, Tom Myers, did not under- 
stand the command, and simply looked up, 
half asleep, and said to the horses, "Gid- 
dap!" 

"Halt!" came the words again, louder and 
unmistakable. 

Myers halted. Standing at the end of 
an elongated bunch of pines where he had 
been invisible until the heads of the horses 
appeared stood the highwayman, with 
menacing gun covering the head of the 
driver. 

"Throw out your treasure and mail!" 
came the command. 

"J have mail, but no treasure," said my 
friend Tom, as he afterward pointed out 
the spot and told the story. "Come and 
get it." 

The lone robber rifled the sacks, turned 
the pockets of the travelers inside out, and 



THE STAGECOACH 115 

bade them drive on without imitating Lot's 
wife; he was never caught. 

To be sure, this is a tame story, and 
many readers doubtless can tell one more 
thrilling; but this one is true. 

The stagecoach is a thing of the past, 
but we still have the hardy, dust-covered, 
mud-daubed teamster, who yet must haul 
the freight far back into hills where for 
ages there will be no railway. To these. 
Godspeed and good cheer! They live by 
the Trails; they eat at the wheel; they 
sleep under the wagon; they are kindly 
and obliging even when their heavily belled 
teams of six to fourteen or more head of 
horses meet another loaded caravan in some 
narrow pass where the highest engineering 
ability is needed to get by in safety; and 
they never leave a fellow-traveler in dis- 
tress. 



AMONG THE HILLS 



To him who in the love of Nature, holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language; . . . 

The hills 
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun. * 

— Bryant. 

Not vainly did the early Persian make 
His altar the high places and the peak 
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take 
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek 
The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are weak, 
Upreared of human hands. . . . compare 
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek 
With Nature*s realm of worship. 

— Byron. 



THE MOTHER DEER 

The ragged sky-line high in air 

Sits boundary to sight 

And seems to end the world; 

But topping it by way well worn by braver 

pioneer, 
A fertile, home-filled dale is found 
Where love holds warm, 
And schools and churches dot the land. 
But while the slow-drawn old stagecoach 
With load of dust-clad travelers 
Crawls over jolting, stone-filled ruts, 
The puffing beasts^ sweat-covered. 
Winding in and out among the stately 

pines 
(Where friendly Nature spreads her yellow 

moss 
O'er bleaching arms long since deprived of 

life), 
May now be seen a mother deer 
Half hidden 'mong the sloping boughs; 
Alert, ears high, eyes wide, body so tense 
And motionless. In silence all 

119 



120 TRAIL TALES 

The passengers admire the instinct-Iove 
Which not affrights the spotted babe 
Fast sleeping at her feet. 
"There are no guns aboard!" says one. 
*'But if there were, how could one's heart 
Be hard enough to murder mother-love?" 
Said I. 



THE SHEPHERD 

The tired shepherd stands among his ewes 

That with their lambs are unafraid 

Of him and keen-eyed dogs; 

They crouch close in about his feet 

Whene'er the coyote's cry 

Or bear's low growl 

Falls tingling on the timid ear. 

Himself thrusts gun to elbow-place 

And peers amid the dust-dressed sage 

And scented chaparral so dense, 

To glimpse the fiery eyeballs 

Of the prowler of the hills; 

While all awatch the faithful collies stand 

Prepared to fend e'en with their lives 

The young and helpless not their own. 



THE FEATHERED DRUMMER 

The wooded thicket holds a drum. 
The air in springtime afternoons 
Is filled with sharp staccato notes 
Whose echoes clear reverberate 
From precipice and timbered hills. 
No fifer plays accompaniment; 
No pageant proud or marching throng 
Keeps step to this deep pulsing bass 
Whose sullen solo booms afar. 

A double challenge is this gage, 

A gauntlet flung for love or war; 

As strutting barnyard chanticleer 

Defies his neighboring lord : 

So calls this crested pheasant-king 

For combat or for peace. 

The meek brown mate upon her nest 

Feels happy and secure 

While thus her lord by deed and word 

Displays his woodland bravery 

And guards their little home. 



122 



MORMONDOM 



That fellow seems to possess but one idea, and 
that is the wrong one. — Samuel Johnson. 

Utah is harder than China. — Bishop Wiley. 

Utah is the hardest soil into which the Methodist 
plowshare was ever set. — Bishop Fowler. 



THE TRAIL OF THE MORMON 

By the Trail had gone Jason Lee, in 
1834, to plant the sturdy oak of Method- 
ism in the Willamette Valley and the north 
Pacific Coast. His task was nobly done; 
the developments of to-day attest the wis- 
dom of the church in sending him and his 
coequal coadjutors, Daniel Lee, Cyrus 
Shepherd, and P. L. Edwards. 

Over this same track went Marcus Whit- 
man, in 1835, to found the mission at 
Waiilatpu, near the present site of Walla 
Walla, and to find there the early grave of 
honorable martyrdom at the hands of the 
people he was attempting to save. The 
call to these two intrepid equals, Lee and 
Whitman, came through the visit of the 
two young Indian chiefs who, immediately 
after the expedition of Lewis and Clark, 
had gone to Saint Louis to obtain a copy 
of the "white man's Book of heaven." The 
names of these two, as previously stated, 

125 



126 TRAIL TALES 

were Hee-oh'ks-te-kin and H'co-a-h'co-a- 
cotes-min. 

On the sixth day of April, 1830, in Kirk- 
land, Ohio, Joseph Smith, Jr., had or- 
ganized the body best known as the Mor- 
mon Church. Fourteen years later he was 
mercilessly, and unjustly, mobbed at Nau- 
voo, Illinois, and after three more years of 
drifting about from pillar to post, the 
Latter-Day Saints prepared to emigrate to 
upper California under the absolute domi- 
nation and guidance of Brigham Young, 
who was often styled the successor to the 
"Mohammed of the West," as Joseph Smith 
was sometimes called. This cult had some 
queer traits. W. W. Phelps, one of their 
more prominent members, thus character- 
ized the leaders of Mormondom: Brigham 
Young, the Lion of the Lord; P. P. Pratt, 
the Archer of Paradise; O. Hyde, the Olive 
Branch of Israel; W. Richards, the Keeper 
of the Rolls; J. Taylor, Champion of Right; 
W. Smith, the Patriarchal Jacob's Staff; W. 
Woodruff, the Banner of the Gospel; G. A. 
Smith, the Entablature of Truth; O. Pratt, 
the Gauge of Philosophy; J. E. Page, the 
Sun Dial; L. Wright, Wild Mountain Ram. 



MORMONDOM 127 

Expelled from Illinois, Iowa, and Mis- 
souri, the trembling Saints sought less 
turbulent surroundings by immersing their 
all in the wild conditions both of men and 
wilderness in the untamed lands of the 
great West. They were not able to sus- 
tain the physical cost of the trek of more 
than a thousand miles under the hardest 
of circumstances. The Trail was the home 
of the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Arapahoes, 
the Otoes, Omahas, Utes, and others, who 
knew neither law nor mercy. The waters 
were often alkaline and deadly as Lethe. 
A thousand miles afoot was the record 
some had to make. They appealed to the 
government, then at war with Mexico, to 
permit a number of their men to enlist as 
soldiers to be marched over the ancient 
Santa Fe Trail, and thus be able to draw 
wages on the journey. This was granted. 
These recruits had little, if anything, to do, 
but they are known in history as the Mor- 
mon battalion. They went to California, 
1847-49, and were present when James 
Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill. 

In 1847, July 24, Mormondom threw up 
its first trenches in the valley of the Great 



128 TRAIL TALES 

Salt Lake, as that saline body was then 
known and recorded. In this salubrious 
region w^s planted the analogy of the 
harem of Mohammed, and the seraglio of 
Brigham became the center of the sensual 
system of the Latter-Day Saints. So 
blatant was the apostle Heber Kimball that 
he said he himself had enough wives to whip 
the soldiers of the United States. 

Evangelical Christianity waited almost 
twenty years before an attempt was made 
to plant the high standards of Christendom 
in the Wahsatch Mountains. In the six- 
ties went the denominations in the order 
here named: Congregational, Protestant 
Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal; in 1871 
the Presbyterians went, and then the Bap- 
tists. It was dark. Mighty night had be- 
clouded the intellect and obscured the 
spiritual senses; civilized sensuality swayed 
with unchecked hand the destinies of the 
masses. The blinded people groped for 
light in the pitchlike blackness of the new 
superstition. 

"None but Americans on guard" in such 
a night! Hear the roll call. None but 
tried and true Christian soldiers were 



MORMONDOM 129 

mounted on those ramparts: Erastus Smith, 
the heart- winner; Thomas Wentworth Lin- 
coln, the scholarly but quiet Grand Army 
man, who always kept his patriotic fires 
banked; George Ellis Jayne, another vet- 
eran of the Civil War, tireless evangelist 
who possibly saw more Mormons made 
Christian than any other pastor of any 
church in Utah; George Marshall Jeffrey, 
eternally at it; Joseph Wilks, methodic, pa- 
tient, sunny; Martinus Nelson, weeping over 
the straying of his Norwegians; Emil E. 
Mork, rugged and steadfast; Martin Ander- 
son and Samuel Hooper, both of whom died 
by the Trail, falling at the *'post of honor." 
Last, but not least of these to be named, 
stands the energetic and "Boanergetic" 
Thomas Corwin Iliff , that Buckeye stentor 
and patriot, who with heart-thrilling tones 
has raised millions of dollars in aiding and 
in establishing hundreds and hundreds of 
churches in these United States. For 
thirty years he commanded the Methodist 
as well as the patriotic redoubts of Utah 
and bearded the "Lion of the Lord" in his 
very den. 

But there were never truer watchmen on 



130 TRAIL TALES 

the high-towered battlements of the real 
Zion than the Protestant Episcopal Bishop, 
Daniel S. Tuttle; the knightly Hawkes of 
the Congregationalists ; the truly apostolic 
Baptist, Steelman; the Presbyterian leaders 
— who surpasses them? See the saintly 
Wishard, the polemic McNiece and Mc- 
Lain; the scholarly and tireless Paden! 

They were loyal to the core, commanding 
the Christian forces as they deployed, en- 
filaded, charged, marched, and stormed the 
trenches of religious libertinism in the fertile 
and paradisaical valleys and roomy caiions 
of the Mormon state of Deseret. These 
never surrendered, compromised, or re- 
treated. 

Glorious Brotherhood! Permit us the 
honor of saluting you. Your like may 
never march abreast again in any cam- 
paign! Living, you were conquerors; dy- 
ing, you are heroes. 

Of these above named Messrs. Hooper, 
Anderson, Steelman, and McNiece have 
entered the ''snow-white tents" of the 
other shore. 



SOME MORMON BELIEFS 

His studie was but litel on the Bible. — Chaucer. 

Imaginations fearfully absurd, 
Hobgoblin rites, and moon-struck reveries, 
Distracted creeds, and visionary dreams. 
More bodiless and hideously misshapen 
Than ever fancy, at the noon of night. 
Playing at will, framed in the madman's brain. 
— Polloky in Course of Time. 

The abode of the dead, where they re- 
mained in full consciousness of their con- 
dition for indefinable periods, or even for 
eternity, has been the theme of many a 
writer both before and after the advent of 
the Saviour of men. Annihilation is re- 
pugnant to the common intelligence. Homer 
sends Ulysses, Dantelike, to the realms of 
the dead, where he converses with them he 
had known in life. The Stygian River, the 
dumb servitor, Charon, the coin-paid fare, 
are all well known in the classics of the 
ancients. 

In some later religio-philosophic studies 

131 



132 TRAIL TALES 

the names are different; some have tartarus, 
some purgatory, some paradise. The last 
is the name adopted by the Mormons. 

The heroes of Homer seemed never to 
hope for a release from the bonds of Hades. 
Voluptuous Circe, the Odysseyan swine- 
maker, told the hero of those tales he was 
a daring one: 

". . . who, yet alive, have gone 
Down to the abode of Pluto; twice to die 
Is yours, while others die but once." 

Many well meaning minds have tried to 
discover in the Bible, or otherwise reason- 
ably invent a second probation for the 
unrepentant as an addendum to the final 
resurrection of the just. Not a little has 
been made of the term "spirits in prison" 
(1 Pet. 3. 19, 20), and of "baptism for the 
dead" (1 Cor. 15. 29). In the intensity of 
zeal, or as a proselyting advertisement, the 
Latter-Day Saints proclaim the possibility 
of all the inhabitants of the grave (para- 
dise) being saved in heaven. To this end, 
early in the history of the organization, 
there was implanted the doctrine of preach- 
ing to the departed and that of proxy 
ministrations. 



MORMONDOM 133 

From their Articles of Faith I take these 
two: 

3. We believe that through the atonement of 
Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to 
the laws and ordinances of the gospel. 

4. We believe that these ordinances are: First, 
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; 
third. Baptism by immersion for the remission of 
sins; fourth. Laying on of hands for the gift of the 
Holy Ghost. 

Now, since without immersion there is 
no remission of sins, and since they who 
are in prison (paradise) are eligible to sal- 
vation, therefore some one must be bap- 
tized for them and have all the other rites 
of the plan likewise administered in their 
name. That "all things may be done de- 
cently and in order," there was received a 
*"• revelation" to the end that temples must 
be built, recorders and other officials ap- 
pointed, and all the paraphernalia neces- 
sary for the work prepared. When these 
rites are consummated some elder of the 
church who dies goes to the spiritual 
prison house and tells the people therein 
confined that these most meritorious works 
have been done for them on earth ; in fact. 



134 TRAIL TALES 

this is the chief reason for their going 
thither. They who will believe this story 
and repent of their sins are then and there 
entitled to ''a right to the tree of life, and 
may enter in through the gates into the 
city." 

Not only are the people redeemed from 
all their sins by the pious ministrations of 
the many temple-workers, who, like Sam- 
uel, continually serve and minister therein, 
but as marriage relations are to continue 
throughout the endless ages of eternity, and 
children are to be born forever and ever, 
these dead have the hymeneal ceremony 
performed "for eternity"; this act is known 
as the ''sealing" process. Men are here 
married — by proxy — to others than the ac- 
tual living wife, sometimes with her con- 
sent, sometimes without it. One old gen- 
tleman, whose name is not to be mentioned, 
was sealed thus for eternity to Martha 
Washington and to Empress Josephine. It 
sounds farcical and foolish in the extreme; 
fit only to be counted as a silly joke, un- 
worthy the attention of a sane soul for a 
minute; but it is terribly sober when it is 
remembered that there are hundreds of 



MORMONDOM 135 

thousands of innocent, honest, and unsus- 
pecting Mormons who really and truly be- 
lieve this to be the only road to eternal 
life and exaltation. 

Added to this is the doctrine of the deifi- 
cation of men. All the true and faithful 
Mormons are to become gods by and by, 
and create and populate new worlds; hence 
the value of polygamy; in fact, this world 
is but one of the samples of this truth. 
Adam is the owner and ruler of earth, and 
to him we pray. He is our God. As such 
he is only one in an endless procession of 
such beings. 

* 'There has been and there now exists an 
endless procession of the Gods, stretching 
back into the eternities, that had no be- 
ginning and will have no end. Their ex- 
istence runs parallel with endless duration, 
and their dominions are limitless as bound- 
less space. "^ 

Possibly the most popular hymn among 
these people is the following, written by 
one of the wives of Joseph Smith, Eliza R. 
Snow. It is in their collection and now in 
use: 



1 New Witness for God. B. H. Roberts, 1895. 



136 TRAIL TALES 

Hymn to Father and Mother 

my Father, thou that dwellest 
In the high and glorious place ! 

When shall I regain thy presence. 
And again behold thy face? 

In thy holy habitation, 
Did my spirit once reside? 

In my first primeval childhood. 
Was I nurtured by thy side? 

For a wise and glorious purpose 

Thou hast placed me here on earth. 
And withheld the recollection 

Of my former friends and birth; 
Yet ofttimes a secret something 

Whispered, "You're a stranger here"; 
And I felt that I had wandered 

From a more exalted sphere. 

1 had learned to call thee Father, 
Through thy Spirit from on high; 

But, until the Key of Knowledge 
Was restored, I knew not why. 

In the heavens are parents single? 
No; the thought makes reason stare! 

Truth is reason; truth eternal 
Tells me, I've a mother there. 

When I leave this frail existence. 
When I lay this mortal by. 

Father, mother, may I meet you 
In your royal court on high? 



MORMONDOM 137 

Then, at length, when I've completed 

All you sent me forth to do. 
With your mutual approbation 

Let me come and dwell with you. 



WEBER TOM, UTE POLYGAMIST 

Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutor'd mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; 
His soul proud Science never taught to stray- 
Far as the solar walk or milky way. 

— Pope. 

When Mormonism was no longer com- 
pelled to maintain the defensive it quickly- 
assumed the offensive. This was appar- 
ently deemed necessary for the existence of 
the system. Two kinds of preaching were 
indulged in by the elders on their missions, 
home and foreign. At home they declared 
the beauty of the Smithian gospel, includ- 
ing the doctrine of polygamy, a sweet morsel 
for the blood-thirsty Utes. They were 
trying by every means. Machiavellian or 
otherwise, to gain the Lamanites, as Indians 
were called by the Mormons, at least to an 
extent which would allow them to remain 
undisturbed throughout the territory of 
Utah. Old Kanosh and other leaders were 
immersed for the remission of their sins, 

138 



MORMONDOM 139 

but they were permitted to multiply unto 
themselves as many squaws as they cared 
for. It would take water stronger than the 
common alkaline pools contained to reach 
the morals of a heathen Ute. 

Very many of the Indians thus were made 
Mormons and white men were appointed as 
their bishops. Brigham Young used to 
make visits to them to try to instruct them 
in various things. For a considerable 
period he was the Superintendent of In- 
dian Affairs for the Territory. He was 
such official at the time of the lamentable 
Mountain Meadow Massacre, in 1857, and 
for which crime Bishop John D. Lee suf- 
fered death. 

Possibly it was the influence of Mr. 
Young that kept the most of the red men 
from the warpath and thus saved the scat- 
tered settlers in the earlier days when there 
were so few to guard the isolated homes in 
the far-away nooks and canons of the 
mountains. 

The other sort of preaching in which the 
elders indulged was that of an absolute and 
unqualified denial of polygamy in Utah. 
Such was the plan of the elders who went 



140 TRAIL TALES 

to Europe. The public denial of John 
Taylor, later president of the church, is 
abundant evidence. When they deny po- 
lygamy now they have the consistency of 
definition to back them; to their manner of 
explaining, polygamy is the act of taking 
new wives; to the non-Mormon, polygamy 
is the possessing of more than one wife. 
For this reason we are very bold in saying 
that polygamy is publicly practiced in Utah 
— witness Joseph F. Smith as chief example. 
Although we may read of it, none can 
comprehend just what it means to a girl- 
wife, two thousand miles away from her 
parents, to be treated as an alien, in a land 
under the flag of the free. This was the 
case in the strictly Mormon settlements in 
Utah thirty years ago. Reason only kept 
the Giant Despair from the threshold of 
the mind. The bravery of these women 
can be compared only to the English 
women of the Sepoy Rebellion days of 
1857 in India, or to those of our American 
sisters who accompanied their valorous 
husbands to their isolated posts on the 
Indian frontiers, resolved to share equally 
in the dangers, and to die lingeringly and 



MORMONDOM 141 

cruelly if necessary. Retreat and sur- 
render never grew in the hearts of such 
women. It was so in the times that were 
called the "dark days" in Utah — the time 
when the government applied its functions 
to the stamping out of polygamous prac- 
tices, 1883 to 1893 — ten terrible years for 
the Mormon as well as the non-Mormon. 

Add to this the fact that, unannounced, 
a brawny, stalwart Indian might walk in 
at the door. More than once has it so oc- 
curred in our home. One day the door 
was suddenly opened and in walked a 
grinning brave, armed with a long knife, 
and followed by his squaw; extending his 
empty hand toward the far-from-home 
girl-wife, alone in the house, he said, 
*'How-do!" In telling us of it, she said: 
"I was scared to death, I thought, but I 
would have shaken hands with him if I 
had died in the attempt. I would not let 
him know I feared him." But this was 
not Weber Tom. 

It was in those fearsome days when the 
leading men of Utah — farmers, bankers, 
stockmen, church dignitaries, all sorts and 
conditions of the Latter-Day Saints — were 



142 TRAIL TALES 

being arrested and haled to the courts al- 
most daily, that one morning there rode up 
to our door the battle-scarred old warrior, 
Weber Tom, chief of the Skull Valley Utes, 
or Goshutes. 

If perfection is beauty, this Indian was 
most beautiful, for he was the ugliest 
creature imaginable, ugly even to perfec- 
tion. One eye had been gouged out, a 
knife-scar extended from his ear down 
across his mouth, and he was Herculean in 
physical proportions. I am a large man, 
but once when I gave him an overcoat he 
tried vainly to button it over his vast 
frontal protuberance, looking at me and 
saying, "Too short, too short." 

This giant chief dismounted, and, seeing 
my wife standing near, reached the reins of 
the bridle to her and said, "Here, squaw, 
hoi' my hoss." 

She said, quietly, "Hold your own horse 
if you want him held." 

Having had to accommodate himself to 
the rudeness of a civilized woman, he made 
other provision for his cayuse and then 
asked her, "Wheh yo'man.^" 
; She told him I was down in the field, and 



MORMONDOM 143 

he then proceeded to find me. He was in 
the depths of trouble. He had several 
squaw-wives and feared he was to be ar- 
rested for it. 

Now he approached me. It was dra- 
matic; it was high-class pantomime. It is 
too bad the kinetoscope, cinematograph, or 
some other moving-picture machine had not 
been invented. He seemed awed by a 
presence, yet so emboldened by the needs 
of his case that he walked stoically to his 
quest. 

Squaring his Atlaslike shoulders, he be- 
gan: "You heap big chief. You talky this 
way" (at the same time extending one 
finger straight from his lips). "Mormon he 
talky this way" (now extending two fingers, 
to show he understood them to talk with 
double tongue). "Mo»mon telly me sojer 
men ketchy me, put me in jug [jail]; me 
havy two, tree, four squaw. You heap big 
chief. You telly me this way" (one finger). 
Continuing, he said: "Me havy two, tree, 
four squaw. Mormon he telly me, me go 
jug; one my squaw he know dat, he heap 
cry, heap cry, heap cry, by um by die!" 

This was accompanied by gestures, throw- 



144 TRAIL TALES 

ing his body backward in imitation of the 
dying woman whom fear had killed, accord- 
ing to his dramatic story. 

I told him something like this: ''No, 
heap big lie. You go back Skull Valley, 
you stay home, no sojer ketchy you, you 
be heap good Injun !" Upon this he grunted 
deeply, shook hands cordially, went back to 
his many-wived tents over across the creek, 
and soon we saw them filing off through the 
sagebrush toward their Skull Valley home, 
many miles over the Onaqui range. 



POLYGAMY OF TO-DAY 

The man that lays his hand upon a woman. 
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch 
Whom 't were gross flattery to name a coward. 

— John Tohin. 

A baby was sleeping. 
Its mother was weeping. 

— Samuel Lover. 

Polygamy may die in Mormondom, but 
has never yet done so. Cases are often 
reported, and from the manner of their 
finding it is a certainty that new alHances 
are being formed continually between mar- 
ried men and unmarried women. 

Not long ago a very bright conversion 
was made in one of the missions of an 
evangelical denomination. The convert was 
a young woman of more than average intel- 
ligence. Some of her relatives had been 
polygamists, but she repudiated the whole 
cult and creed. For a while this decision 
made it necessary for her to find other 
residence than her rightful home. 

145 



146 TRAIL TALES 

Some time after she permitted herself to 
be persuaded that a young man of her 
acquaintance loved her more than he did 
the polygamous tenet of his church — he was a 
Mormon — and that he never would attempt 
to woo and win another woman while she 
remained his wife. She consented, and was 
happy in her home life. Not for a moment 
did she suspect him of double-dealing. Her 
honest heart was above entertaining such 
suspicion had it entered. Serenely she saw 
her children growing to useful womanhood. 
Not a cloud of anxiety appeared on the calm 
sea of life; all was fine sailing. One day she 
was making some repairs in one of her hus- 
band's garments when a letter fell from a 
pocket. It bore the postmark of a city 
where they both had relatives, and it was 
quite natural that she should look into its 
contents. 

What despair and agony seized her when 
she read therein the statement from the 
''other woman" telling her "fond" husband 
of the birth of the child! 

The poor, heart-stricken, and hitherto 
trusting wife immediately rose to the dig- 
nity of outraged womanhood and insulted 



MORMONDOM 147 

wifehood and compelled the polygamist to 
choose at once between her and the con- 
cubine. He did so, choosing the younger 
woman and leaving her who had trusted 
him too fondly. 

This is not a tale of the ancients in Utah, 
but a living, festering story of the vivid 
present. 

One way of avoiding prosecution by the 
law is the surreptitious, clandestine rearing 
of children, whose mothers lose no prestige 
in the community; for it is well understood 
"among the neighbors and friends." "Pub- 
lic polygamy has been suspended," but the 
requirement of the doctrine remains un- 
changed. 



GREAT SALT LAKE 



So lonely 'twas that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

— Coleridge, 

This is truth the poet sings 
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering 
happier things. 

— Tennyson. 



GREAT SALT LAKE 

Many stories, weird and lurid, true and 
untrue, have been told of this body of 
saline water lying imposed on the breast of 
the beautiful and scenic State of Utah. 
Although one of the transcontinental high- 
ways of ocean-to-ocean travel has extended 
its bands of steel directly across its wide 
bosom for many miles, it is still a spot 
where mystery lingers. 

Private as well as public legends are 
handed down from lip to ear rather than 
from page to eye. For that reason there are 
tales of this wonderful salt sea to be learned 
only by residing in the vicinity. Its natural 
moods are unlike the ocean, and its indi- 
vidual characteristics would make a book. 

The briny pond is but a wee thing as 
compared with its gigantic dimensions in 
the days when its waters were sweet and 
had an outlet to the north. Then its arms 
spread far south into Arizona, over into 
Nevada and into Idaho. It was 350 miles 

151 



152 TRAIL TALES 

from the northern end to the southern, and 
145 miles across from east to west. The 
area was 20,000 square miles. This greater 
lake stood 1,000 feet higher than does the 
present one, although this one is 4,280 feet 
above the level of the sea. Geologists have 
named the earlier one Bonneville, in honor 
of the intrepid soldier-explorer whom Wash- 
ington Irving has so well fixed in American 
literature. 

By some as yet unknown cataclysm a 
great break was made at the north end of 
this inland ocean and its pent volume was 
poured into the canon of the Port Neuf 
toward the ravenous Snake. This reduced 
the level four hundred feet, but the old 
beach line may still be easily noted. Grad- 
ually this diminished body became smaller 
and smaller until it reached the present 
stage of desiccation. 

So impure is this heavy liquid that after 
evaporation there is a residuum of twenty- 
eight pounds of solid matter in every hun- 
dred. This is composed of salt, magnesium, 
and other elements carrying three dollars of 
gold to the ton; the gold is not made a 
matter of trade or of industry because 



GREAT SALT LAKE 153 

facilities are lacking for its handling. Very 
little animal life is found in this brine, and 
none of vegetable; in fact, at every point 
where the water touches the shore vegeta- 
tion vanishes utterly. The animal life is 
that of a very small gnat which, mosquito- 
like, lays its eggs on the surface of the 
water. The larvae, when driven shoreward, 
collect in such quantities as to cause a 
strong, unpleasant odor observable for miles 
to the leeward. Myriads of seagulls here 
find a dainty feast. 

Salt Lake affords the finest and really the 
only beach-bathing resort in the whole 
interocean country. The bathing is at- 
tended with little, if any, danger. In 
thirty years only two persons have been 
lost. These strangled before assistance 
reached them. One body was found after 
four years, lying in the salty sand at the 
south end of the lake, whither the high 
winds from the north had drifted it. All 
the parts protected by the sand were per- 
fectly preserved and as beautiful as if 
carved from Parian marble. 

The tops of a number of sunken moun- 
tains still protrude above the surface and 



154 TRAIL TALES 

form islands: such are Fremont, Church, 
Stanbury, Carrington, and others. Some of 
these are habitable, possessing fine springs 
and irrigable land. Very few people live 
on these islands, but some brave spirits 
dare to face the semiprivations of such 
isolation and stay there with their herds. 

Doubtless, many tales of heroism and 
devotion could be told of those who have 
lived on these islands. One of the best 
known is that qf Mrs. Wenner, who, a few 
years after her marriage, went with her 
husband and little children to live on 
Fremont Island. Her husband's health fail- 
ing, the oversight of the herds fell largely 
upon her, but she cheerily took up the 
burden, the while she trained her little 
ones, and was ever a true companion to 
him whom she daily saw slipping away. 

The end came on a dread and fearsome 
day, while the faithful man who worked 
for them was detained on the mainland by 
a raging storm. The children and an in- 
competent woman could give her little as- 
sistance or consolation. There on the 
lonely, storm-lashed island, with faint- 
whispered words of love, the dear one 



GREAT SALT LAKE 155 

closed his eyes forever. Tenderly she cared 
for his body, and sadly she kept her vigil, 
replenishing through the long night the two 
watchfires intended as a signal to those on 
the mainland. On the night of the second 
day, the man made his dangerous way back 
to the island — and with his help she laid 
the loved husband in his island grave, with 
no service but the tears and prayers of 
those who mourned. 

This is but one story of desolation and 
sorrow — but the deep, briny waters and 
the barren, forbidding shores hold in their 
keeping many suggestions of mystery and 
of tears. 



ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE 



I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 
Would harrow up thy soul. 

— Shakespeare, 



ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE 

'*I PANNED him out over and over ag'in, 
But found nary sign of color," 
Said Argonaut Sam one evening, when. 
As sitting atop of a box, to some men 
He was spinning a yarn of the gold-trail. 

And then, 
With arms set akimbo, he stra'ightened his 

back 
And said: " 'Twuz one night in the fifties 

I know; 
Ther' kem up the trail frum the gulch jist 

below 
A youngish-like feller; but steppin' so slow 
I heartily pitied him even before 
I saw his pale brow and heerd the sharp 

hack 
Of his trouolesome cough, and plain enough 

lack 
Of more'n enough power to bring to my 

door 
That tremblin' young body. 

159 



160 TRAIL TALES 

"He hed a small pack — 
A blanket an' buckskin — but that wa'nt no 

lack 
In them days when notions an' fashions 

wuz slack; 
When all a man needed, besides pick an' pan, 
Wuz a wallet o' leather to tie up his dust — 
'R a place to git grub-staked (that means to 

git trust 
Till he found a good prospeck); an' then 

he'd put in 
His very best licks; fur in them days 'twuz 

sin 
Fer a man strong o' body, o' wind an' o' 

limb 
T' hang erround loafin' all day, 'twuz too 

thin. 

"Well, this puny feller hed grin'-stunlike 

grit. 
But wuz clean tuckered out when my cabin 

he hit; 
'N fell down a-faintin' jist inside my door — 
His eyes set 'n' glassy — he seemed done fer, 

shore. 
So I straightened him out, couldn't do 

nothin' more 



ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE 161 

Than to put back his hair an' t' dampen 

his brow, 
An' to feel fer his pulse — joy! I found it — 

slow 
An' fliekery though, stoppin' and startin', 

an' now 
Gone ag'in; then it revived, but so faint, 

don't you know. 
That minute by minute I couldn't hev said 
Whether the feller wuz livin' or dead. 

"All night I watched by him; an' 'long 

a-to'rds light 
I seed that a change hed come: so, honor 

bright ! 
I made up my mind that I'd save that 

young life 
If it took me all summer. I'd fight 
With grim death to a finish fer him. 

"An' so I begun. 
I quit workin' my claim 
Where I'd git on an average ('pon my good 

name) 
An ounce or more daily of number one gold. 
An' in them days we thought nothin', you see, 
Of layin' by stuff fer a rainy day; we 



162 TRAIL TALES 

Hed plenty; the diggins wuz rich, an' wuz 

thick 
Scattered over the kentry. Most every crick 
Hed plenty o' gold in nuggets or dust — 
An' the man who wuz stingy hed ort to be 

cussed. 
So I shouldered my task. 

'Tt wuz wonderful how 
The new life appeared to come back to my 

boy; 
(Fer that's what I called him — 'my boy') 

an' the joy 
O' perviden fer suthin' besides my lone self 
Made me happy. Y' see, th' experunce 

wuz new; 
Fer I'd lived all alone ever since forty-two, 
When, back in Ohio, I'd buried my wife 
An' baby. Since then I'd looked on my life 
As a weary, onfriendly, detestable load. 
So that's why I lived all alone, don't you see.^ 
I didn't love nothin' and nothin' loved me. 

"But now of young Josh — his name wuz 
Josh Clark — 
He'd come frum ol' York State — could sing 
like a lark — 



ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE 163 

Wuz finely brung up, an' that mother o' 

his, 
A sister he tol' me, an' a girl he called 

Liz 
'D a give the hull earth if they only could 

know 
If he wuz alive; but so hard-hearted, he 
Would never be grateful to them nur to 

me. 
Though I had no claim on him, yet it would 

seem 
After all I hed done fer him, shorely some 

gleam 
O' thankfulness somewhere might some time 

be seen. 
'Sides spendin' my all I hed broken down 

too, 
Wuz a shattered ol' man, though but then 

fifty-two; 
Fer I'd give up my health an' my strength 

to pull through 
My boy — fer I loved him, if ever men do. 
But, no; it appeared that he hedn't no 

heart. 
Not once did he thank me, and never asked 

why 
I nussed him to life, 'stid o' lettin' him die. 



164 TRAIL TALES 

"His wants wuz demands, his wishes com- 
mands, 
An' once in the dusk, as we set on the sands 
Of a stream that run by, he reached with 

his hands 
So quick an' so blamed unexpected, you see, 
Grabbed me by the hair an' out with a knife. 
An' demanded my gold. I thought fer my 

life 
He wuz jokin'; but no, when I seed that 

fierce look 
Of murder an' pillage, I knowed what I'd 

done; 
I'd thawed out a viper upon my hearth- 
stun 
An' now wuz becomin' its prey. 

''But, I'd none: 
I'd spent all the surplus I hed to save him. 
I'd missed all the summer an' fall to nuss him 
Who now like a tiger wuz takin' my life. 
'Hoi' on, my dear Josh! Hoi' on, my dear 

boy!' 
No further I got, fer his hands clutched my 

throat — 
I squirmed myself loose, but grappHn' my 

coat 



ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE 165 

He throwed me ag'in, now a madman, 

indeed. 
His dirk-knife wuz raised. I said, 'Do yer 

best. 
I've give you now all that I ever possessed 
But life. Take it now if you like!' An' he 

struck. 



"How long I laid there in the dark, I 

don't know; 
But when I kem to I wuz layin' in bed. 
An' the people wuz talkin' so easy an' low. 
An' I knowed by the bandages too on my 

head 
That I hed been nigh to the gates o' the 

dead. 

"An' *Where wuz Josh Clark.^' did you 

say.? I don't know. 
He never wuz seen in the diggins below, 
Ner heerd of in them parts ag'in, fer I 

know 
He'd a-swung to the limb that come fust in 

the way; 
Fer the boys in them days hed little to say. 
But wuz mighty in doin'. So he got away. 



166 TRAIL TALES 

"So it seems that some people is jist so 

depraved 
There ain't a thing in 'em that ort to be 

saved. 
'Twuz jist so with Josh, who I loved as a 

son; 
He lived fer hisself an' fer hisself alone. 
'N' 'at's why I remarked at the fust of this 

yarn, 
The thing 'at it's cost me so dearly to 

larn — 
T panned him out over an' over ag'in, 
But found nary sign of a color.' " 



THE WEAITH OF THE BLIZZARD 



The night it was gloomy, the wind it was high; 
And hollowly howling it swept through the sky. 

— Southey. 

What matter how the night behaved? 
What matter how the north wind raved? 

— Whittier. 



THE WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD 

We dread the unseen. Fear is always 
enervating; sometimes even deadly. Who 
has not fearsomely anticipated that which 
never came and wasted valuable energy 
and time in building bridges none are ever 
to cross .^ The surgical patient actually suf- 
fers more at sight of somber white-clad 
nurses, and the thought of the operation, 
than he does from the ordeal itself. It 
may be that we subconsciously dread the 
helpless state of unconsciousness into which 
the anaesthetic plunges us, and hesitate at 
a trip, no matter how short, into death's 
borderland, preferring to keep our own 
hands as long as possible on the helm of 
the ship of life. 

I wonder why we become terror-stricken 
at the thought of ghosts. The untutored 
child needs only a hint to make him shy at 
the dark; and a lad has to be pretty large 
before he can walk far at night without 



170 TRAIL TALES 

once in a while looking behind him, just to 
be certain there is nothing following. 

Thus spirits, spooks, bogies, wraiths, and 
other uncanny apparitions are unintentional 
inheritances of the race; a race that knows 
little more about the impending and im- 
pinging unseen than did the Saxon fathers 
who gave us our spooky speech. 

I -once had an experience which grows in 
interest as the years pass by. I had no 
fear or thought of fear that night, and the 
scenes of the evening were absolutely un- 
announced; they entered upon the sleety 
stage for whose violent acts I held no 
program. 

One afternoon I was to go to one of my 
appointments, a mining town in Utah. In 
order to relieve home cares I took with me 
my four-year-old son, who thus would get 
some novel entertainment as well. To the 
buggy I hitched Jenny, the strawberry-roan 
cayuse, and started for the distant point. 
It was a little stormy all the way, and by 
the time we had well begun the service it 
had thickened so that a hard snow was 
setting in. It was dead in the north and 
continued with such strength that soon 



WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD 171 

there appeared no slant to the falHng 
columns. By the time church was dis- 
missed the blizzard was on in full force, 
and the roads were already so filled with 
the new drifts that to return with the 
buggy was hardly thinkable. I borrowed a 
saddle, and leaving the little lad with 
friends, started for home, where I was 
under appointment to preach that evening. 
My way lay in the north, in the very teeth 
of the raging storm. With head tucked 
down, I trusted the reins to Jenny, who 
had never disappointed me in many a 
mountain trip, but I had not gone far until 
I found the storm was at my back. Peering 
sharply through the fast falling darkness, I 
discovered that the mountains were on my 
left instead of on my right, as they should 
have been. Jenny had turned tail to the 
storm. Feeling herself unwilling to face the 
arctic onset, she was retreating. 

Only the dire necessity of the occasion 
made me compel her to face the torturing 
attack of the icy shafts that were hurling 
themselves on us like steel points. 

We were forced, Jenny and I, to abandon 
the only road, now drift-filled, and take an 



172 TRAIL TALES 

unbroken way through the sagebrush, juni- 
pers, buckbrush, and other tangled chapar- 
ral, where there was no trail at all, and 
farther to the right, that I might keep an 
eye on the mountains and not get turned 
around again. I felt the force of Cardinal 
Newman's immortal hymn, 

. . . amid the encircling gloom. 

Lead thou me on! 
The night is dark and I am far from home; 

Lead thou me on! 

We had not gone far until I began to 
hear the sweetest music. I could not 
imagine from whence it fell, as I knew 
there was not a human home in all that 
plain between the two settlements. Then I 
heard personal conversation; in fact, the 
night was full of pleasant travelers. The 
awful storm seemed not to affect them in 
the least. They seemed to have an open 
road too, while we were plunging through 
deep snowdrifts, my feet already dragging 
along their tops. 

When the first carriage load came up I 
saw it was only a desert juniper. The 
boreal gale sweeping through its shivering 
branches made converse in the music of 



WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD 173 

the wild, Jenny and I being the only seat- 
holders in that grand opera. Soon another 
caravan of belated folks drove up; but it 
was only a load of hay that had been over- 
tipped. Others came, but they were only 
bushes or some inanimate object. There 
was little life out on that perishing night. 

After hours of fearsome and benumbing 
travel, Jenny stumbled with me into the 
little home town. A good feed of oats and 
a warm shelter doubtless ended the story 
happily for her. But for me — the ghost of 
the desert and the wraith of the blizzard 
had become real. They spoke to me that 
night and I understood. 



THE GREAT NORTHWEST 



God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat 
for this planting. — Longfellow. 

Westward the course of empire takes its way. — 
Berkeley. 

In the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
streams in the desert. And the parched ground 
shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs 
of water. — Isaiah, 



THE GREAT NORTHWEST 

Possibly there are those who find them- 
selves thinking that Western tales are trav- 
elers' tales and must be taken with "a grain 
of salt." Some also say that the man who 
crosses the Missouri never is able to tell 
the truth again; this is crude, I know, and 
in some cases true, but they who are so 
aflSicted were just the same before they ever 
saw the Missouri. 

Our waterless areas were considered by 
Captain Bonneville (as told by Washington 
Irving) utterly barren and forever hopeless 
wastes. In Astoria — ^chapter thirty-four — 
these words are used: 

"In this dreary desert of sand and gravel 
of the Snake here and there is a thin and 
scanty herbage, insufficient for the horse or 
the buffalo. Indeed, these treeless wastes 
between the Rocky Mountains and the Pa- 
cific are even more desolate and barren than 
the naked, upper prairies on the Atlantic 
side; they present vast desert tracts that 

177 



178 TRAIL TALES 

must ever defy cultivation, and interpose 
dreary and thirsty wilds between the habi- 
tations of man, in traversing which the 
wanderer will often be in danger of per- 
ishing." 

So thought Captain Bonneville; so wrote 
the matchless American litterateur, Wash- 
ington Irving, of '*Sunnyside," author and 
authority, creator of The Life of George 
Washington, and the Broken Heart, which 
made Lord Byron weep. The doughty 
Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, who 
died as late as 1878, obtaining leave of 
absence and a furlough, endured the 
pleasure of hardships common to the ex- 
plorer, and through his happy biographer 
added the Trail to literature; but his 
eye of vision did not se.e these great 
stones of the commonwealth, Utah, Wy- 
oming, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. 
The very region so carefully pictured above 
as the dreariest of deserts, a veritable 
Western Sahara, is the exact location of 
Idaho and a large portion of Oregon; a 
region perfectly adapted to the sustenance 
of immense population and intense de- 
velopment. 



THE GREAT NORTHWEST 179 

Moses understood all the wisdom of the 
Egyptians. We do not, but we do know 
that the biggest thing in an arid country 
is the ditch. America's triumph to date 
in the twentieth century is the completion 
of the Panama Ditch. The ditch is in 
Idaho more valuable by far than the land, 
for without it the parched soil is practically 
worthless, being an area of shimmering sand, 
where the ash-colored and dust-covered 
sagebrush breeds the loathsome horned 
toad, the rough-and-ready rattlesnake, and 
the slinking, night-hunting coyote, which 
preys on the lithe-limbed, loping jack rabbit. 

The modern Western American is rapidly 
learning a modified wisdom of the ancient 
irrigators of Egypt, and already knows how 
to drain the irrigated acres and leech 
these old alluvial plains. From the days 
when the frosty glacial plowman ran his 
deep basaltic furrows for the majestic Snake 
and other streams, these gorges of nature 
had been only mossy beds over which lazily 
slid the unmeasured volumes down to the 
western and "bitter moon-mad sea." Now 
man, the mightiest of all magicians, has 
lured the liquid serpents from their age- 



180 TRAIL TALES 

long couches, cut them into thousands of 
smaller streams, and sent them bravely 
abroad on the face of the protesting desert, 
drowning its death and making it to bloom 
and blossom. 

As a concrete instance of the artificial 
possibilities of Idaho and contiguous re- 
gions, I will here instance a statement made 
for me by the Rev. H. W. Parker, superin- 
tendent of Pocatello District, and resident 
of Twin Falls, under date of October, 1914: 
"Where ten years ago this very minute 
there was not a fence nor a furrow (only 
the conditions above described by Wash- 
ington Irving) there are now such munici- 
palities as Twin Falls, Filer, Rupert, Bur- 
ley, and others soon to be as fine. As 
pastor in 1904, my first official trip to Twin 
Falls was made on July 14. I found one or 
two frame buildings and some tents stuck 
around in the sagebrush; some streets had 
been marked out, but no grading had been 
done. Dust, heat, and sagebrush were the 
main features of the place. In October I 
preached the first sermon ever delivered by 
any minister in the new village. The con- 
gregation numbered forty-one. On Feb- 



THE GREAT NORTHWEST 181 

ruary 5, 1905, I organized the first church 
with seventeen members; on May 23, 1909, 
we dedicated the present edifice at a cost 
of $18,000, exclusive of the lots. 

''To-day this church has a membership of 
more than five hundred. This youngster 
has turned back into the treasuries of the 
denomination in regular collections more 
than $3,000. The city has to-day seven 
thousand people. There are between four 
and five miles of asphalt-paved streets, a 
perfect sewer system, and cement sidewalks 
throughout the whole municipality. An in- 
vestment of $120,000 has been made in two 
splendidly equipped grade school buildings, 
besides a high school costing a quarter of a 
million dollars. These combined schools 
have an enrollment of over two thousand 
pupils with a teaching force of above sixty; 
the high school graduated forty-eight last 
commencement. There is not a saloon in 
the entire county." 

Surely "progress" is here spelled in large 
letters. 

Years ago, with the narrow strip along 
the Atlantic in mind, Longfellow wrote, 
"God had sifted three kingdoms to find 



182 TRAIL TALES 

the wheat for this planting." And as the 
mighty empire took its course toward the 
West of Hmitless opportunity the good God 
kept the sieve running full time, so that 

to-day 

The best of the best 
Are in the Northwest. 



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